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UME SAN IN THE FIELD OF IRIS 





Little People Everywhere 


UME SAN 
IN JAPAN 


BY ETTA BLAISDELL McDONALD 

n 

AND JULIA DALRYMPLE 

Authors of “Manuel in Mexico,” “Raphael in 
Italy,” “Kathleen in Ireland,” etc. 

r 


Illustrated 


BOSTON 

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 
1909 


Copyright, 1909, 

By Little, Brown, and Company. 


All rights reserved. 


Published September, 1909. 




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, a* 24698 3 

| SEC J 

>3 1909 




printers 

S. J. Paekhill & Co., Boston, U. S. A. 


PREFACE 


Japan is a paradise of flowers and of treasure- 
flowers, as the Japanese mothers call their babies. 
In no other country in the world do they both form 
so large a part of the daily life of the people. From 
the first white plum blossom to the last gorgeous 
chrysanthemum the path of the days is strewn 
with beautiful blossoms; and from the time of the 
Dolls’ Festival to the New Year’s Celebration there 
is a constant round of simple pleasures for the chil- 
dren. 

Happy children! who are always laughing and 
never crying; who are taught filial respect, rever- 
ence, and unquestioning obedience, but are sur- 
rounded in their homes with an atmosphere of kind- 
ness, cheerfulness and loving care. 

It is true that the New Japan is very different 
from the Old. Railway trains and electric cars are 
taking the place of the jinrikisha and kago; modern 
school-houses, with desks, chairs, blackboards, and 
the latest methods of teaching are fast replacing the 
tiny school-room with its matted floors and its les- 
sons learned by rote. But the spirit of the com- 


PREFACE 


mon people is unchanged. The children play the 
same games and listen to the same delightful tales ; 
and their fathers and mothers hold to their old 
superstitions, their ancestor-worship and their love 
of nature. 

This story is a picture of the simple life of a 
Japanese family. To follow little Ume San through 
the year, to play with her dolls on the days of the 
Dolls’ Festival, to go with her to the parks to ad- 
mire the cherry blossoms or chrysanthemums and 
join the crowds who are celebrating these joyous 
seasons, to feed the goldfishes and doves in the 
temple gardens, to buy toys and gifts in the streets 
of shops, and to welcome the New Year with 
festivity and merrymaking, is to catch a glimpse 
of the rare charm and spirit that pervade life in 
this “ Land of the Rising Sun.” 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Little Miss Plum Blossom i 

II. Ume’s Birthday 9 

III. Tei Buys a Doll 18 

IV. The Dolls* Festival . * 26 

V. A Visit to the Temple 36 

VI. Cherry-Blossom Time 42 

VII. The Flag Festival 51 

VIII. The Singing Insects . . . • 57 

IX. A Trip to Kamakura 63 

X. The Island of Shells / 74 

XI. A Day in School 82 

XII. Yuki San in the Street of Shops ... 88 

XIII. The Emperor’s Birthday 95 

XIV. Daruma Sama 104 

XV. New Year’s Day hi 













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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


Umd San in the Field of Iris . . Frontispiece 

Boys Playing Marbles Page 12 

Umd Riding in a Jinrikisha . . . . “37 

“The Cherry Trees in Ueno Park are in full 

Blossom ” “42 

There was a Fish for every Boy . . . “ 52 

Fujiyama, the Sacred Mountain ... “69 

“Nothing can harm the Great Buddha” . “ 73 

“ Umd caught her first Glimpse of the Lovely 

Green Island” . . . . . “74 

The Street of Shops and Asakusa Temple . “ 91 






UME SAN IN JAPAN 

CHAPTER I 

LITTLE MISS PLUM BLOSSOM 

The little plum tree in the garden had blossomed 
regularly every year for ten years on the twentieth 
day of the second month. That day was Plum 
Blossom’s birthday. 

On the day that she was born the little plum 
tree had blossomed for the first time. For that 
reason she was called Ume, which is the Japanese 
word for “ plum blossom ” ; and for her sake the 
tree had opened its first blossoms on that same day 
for the next nine years. 

Now, on the day before her eleventh birthday, 
all the buds were closed hard and fast. Ume 
looked at them just before going to bed and there 
seemed no chance of their opening for several 
days. 

“ Perhaps the weather will be fine to-morrow, 
Ume-ko,” said her mother, as she spread a wadded 
quilt on the floor for her little daughter’s bed. 
“ If it is, and the sun shines honorably bright, 
the buds may open before the hour of sunset.” 


2 


UME SAN IN JAPAN 


“ I will say a prayer to Benten Sama that it may 
be so,” answered Ume. Benten Sama is the Japa- 
nese goddess of good fortune, to whom the little 
girl prayed very often. 

She knelt upon the mat and bent down until her 
forehead touched the floor, after the Japanese man- 
ner of making an honorable bow. She clapped her 
hands softly three times, and then rubbed one little 
pink palm against the other while she prayed. 

“ Dear Benten Sama,” she said, “ grant that just 
one little spray of the plum blossoms may open 
to-morrow.” 

For a moment she was very still, and then she 
added, “ If they are open when I first wake in the 
morning, I will honorably practise on my koto for 
one whole hour after breakfast.” 

Then little Ume Utsuki slipped into her bed upon 
the floor, laid her head on the thin cushion of her 
wooden pillow, and drew the soft puff under her 
cunning Japanese chin. 

“ Good-night, dear Benten Sama,” she whispered 
softly, and fell asleep with the words of an old 
Japanese song on her drowsy tongue : — 

“ Evening burning ! 

Little burning! 

Weather, be fair to-morrow ! ” 

The buds on the plum tree outside were closed 


LITTLE MISS PLUM BLOSSOM 3 

hard and fast, and the house walf£ about Ume were 
also tightly closed. The bright moon in the heavens 
could find no chink through which to send a cheer- 
ing ray to little Ume San. 

All through the night the frost sparkled on the 
bare twigs of the dwarf trees in the garden. All 
through the night the plum tree stood still and 
made no sign that Benten Sama had heard Ume’s 
prayer. When the moonbeams grew pale in the 
morning light the buds were still tightly closed. 

Ume stirred in her bed on the floor, crept softly 
to the screen in the wall and pushed it open. She 
moved the outer shutter also along its groove and 
stepped off the veranda without even stopping to 
put on her white stockings or her little wooden 
clogs. 

Down the garden path to the plum tree she pat- 
tered as fast as her bare feet could carry her. 

Alas, there was nothing to be seen on her plum 
tree but brown buds! 

She looked up into the gray morning sky and 
tried to think of something else; but her gay little 
kimono covered a heart that was heavy with dis- 
appointment. 

The tears tried to force their slow way into her 
eyes, but the little girl blinked them back again. 

Ume’s ten years had been spent in learning the 
hard lesson of bearing disappointments cheerfully. 


4 


UME SAN IN JAPAN 


Now, with the shadow of tears filling her eyes, she 
tried to bring the shadow of a smile to her tiny 
mouth. 

“ Benten Sama did not honorably please to open 
the buds,” she whispered with a sob. 

Then, standing on the frosty ground, with her 
bare toes numb from the cold, Ume made a re- 
bellious little resolve deep in her heart where she 
thought Benten Sama would know nothing about it. 

She resolved not to practise on her koto at all 
after breakfast. 

There were two reasons for making the resolve 
so secretly. She might wish to pray to Benten 
Sama again some time, although if the goddess 
were not going to answer her prayers it did not 
seem at all likely; and besides, it was being very 
disobedient, because it was the rule that she must 
practise one-half hour every morning after break- 
fast. 

Suddenly she realized that her disobedience would 
hurt her mother, who was not at all to blame be- 
cause the plum tree had not blossomed; but just 
as her resolution began to weaken, her mother 
came out upon the veranda and called to her. 

“ The plum branch which your august father 
brought home only a week ago is full of blossoms,” 
she said, as she led the child back into the house. 

It was true. In a beautiful vase on the floor of 


LITTLE MISS PLUM BLOSSOM 5 

the honorable alcove stood a spray of white plum 
blossoms. Ume’s mother pushed the sliding walls 
of the room wide open so that the morning sun 
might shine full upon the flowers. 

The little girl ran across the matted floor and 
knelt joyously before them. “ They are most hon- 
orably welcome ! ” she cried, and bent her forehead 
to the floor in salutation. 

She forgot at once her disappointment in the 
garden and her resolve not to practise. She touched 
the sweet blossoms with loving fingers and called 
her brother to look at the beautiful things. 

“ Come Tara San ! Come and look at the eldest 
brother of a hundred flowers ! ” she called. 

Not only Tara, her brother, but Yuki, her baby 
sister, also came to bend over the blossoms in de- 
light. 

The spray stood in a brown jar filled with moist 
earth; here and there the brown color of the jar 
was flecked with drifts of white to represent the 
snow on bare earth, and the branch looked like a 
tiny tree growing out of the ground. 

The plum is the first of all the trees to blossom 
in Japan, and for that reason it is called “ eldest 
brother” to the flowers. 

While the children touched the blossoms gently 
and chattered their delight, their mother was busy, 
waking the servants, sliding back all the wooden 


6 


UME SAN IN JAPAN 


shutters of the house, folding the bedding and put- 
ting it away in the closets. 

Ume left her flower-gazing and sprang to her own 
puffs before her mother could touch them. “ I will 
put them away,” she said, and folded them carefully 
as she had been taught to do. After breakfast they 
would have to be taken out and aired ; but the room 
must first be put in order for the morning meal. 

Ume’s bed was made, as are all Japanese beds, 
by spreading a quilted puff upon the floor. With 
another puff over her, and a wooden block on which 
to rest her head, the little girl slept as comfortably 
as most people sleep on mattresses and soft pil- 
lows. 

Ume laughed softly now as she folded the puffs 
away in their closet. “ There are still many things 
to make my birthday a happy one,” she said to her- 
self. “ There will be a game with Cousin Tei 
after breakfast, and perhaps she will give me a 
gift.” She said the last words in a whisper, so 
that her mother would not hear. No matter how 
much she might long for a gift, it was not becom- 
ing in her to speak of it beforehand. 

She was sure that there would be gifts from 
her father, and mother and from the respected 
grandmother. That was to be expected, and had. 
even been hinted. The grandmother had mentioned 
an envelope of paper handkerchiefs the very day 


LITTLE MISS PLUM BLOSSOM 7 

before, after Ume had made an unusually graceful 
bow to her. 

In her heart Ume wanted most a pair of little 
American shoes, but she had never dared to ask 
for them because her father did not like the dress 
of the American women. In fact, he often told 
Ume to observe carefully how much more graceful 
and attractive the kimono is than the strange cloth- 
ing worn by the foreign people. 

The little girl sighed as she remembered it. Just 
then she heard her father’s step in the next room 
and turned quickly to bow before him. 

The maids had brought several lacquered trays 
into the room, one for each member of the family, 
and had set them near together on the floor. Each 
tray had short legs, three or four inches high, and 
looked like a toy table. On the tray was placed a 
pair of chopsticks, a dainty china bowl and a tiny 
cup. Now one maid was beginning to fill the 
bowls with boiled rice and another was pouring tea 
into the cups. 

All three children remained standing until the 
father entered the room. Then each one, even 
Baby San, bowed before him, kneeling on the floor 
and touching his forehead to the mat and saying, 
“ Good morning, honorable Father.” 

To their mother the children bowed in the same 
way, and also to their grandmother when she came 


8 


UME SAN IN JAPAN 


into the room. Everything would have been most 
quiet and proper but for the baby. She liked to 
bump her little forehead on the floor so well that 
she kept on kotowing to old black Tama, the tailless 
cat, who stalked into the room. As if that were not 
enough, she bowed to each one of the breakfast 
trays until her mother seated her before one of them 
and gave her a pair of tiny chopsticks. 

Then there was the waiting until the grandmother 
and the father and mother were serwed, which 
seemed to the baby to take too long a time. She 
beat the tray with her chopsticks and called for the 
rice-cakes even as they were disappearing down 
the honorable throat of her father. 

Tara laughed. He was very fond of his little 
sister. That she should do such an unheard-of 
thing as to demand cakes from her father seemed 
to him exceedingly funny. His father smiled, too. 

“ Your grandmother will have a task to teach you 
what is proper, Yuki San/’ he said. 

At last the breakfast of rice, tea and raw fish 
was over. The little lacquer trays were all taken 
out of the room, and the father was ready to go to 
his silk shop. 

His jinrikisha was waiting at the garden gate. 
In their place on the flat stone at the house entrance 
stood his wooden clogs, and all the family gathered 
at the door to bid him “ Sayonara.” 


CHAPTER II 


ume’s birthday 

Ume stood still, looking after her father until 
his jinrikisha was out of sight. 

Down in her heart there was an uneasy feeling 
that she was going to do wrong. She had resolved 
to omit her koto practice, and having made such a 
resolve it seemed to her as binding as a promise. 
But now was the time she had always given to her 
practice; now, when her mother was busy with 
household cares. 

“ I will go first to cousin Tei’s,” she said to her- 
self, and ran to her grandmother’s room to find 
her mother. 

“ O Haha San,” she said, “ may I have your 
honorable permission to go to cousin Tei’s house? ” 

“ Yes, Daughter,” answered her mother, and went 
on matching the silk pieces of the grandmother’s 
new kimono. 

Ume stepped down from the veranda into the 
garden path; then she stopped and looked back 
into the room where her koto lay. Something 
within her told her to go back. It was the strong 


10 


UME SAN IN JAPAN 


sense of obedience to duty which makes such a large 
part of the life of every Japanese girl. 

She felt it so strongly that she took one step 
backward. Then the resolve made in the early 
morning, when she was disappointed at not seeing 
the plum blossoms, flashed into her memory. She 
slipped her feet into her wooden clogs, turned 
toward the garden and clattered swiftly down the 
path. 

All the flowering shrubs were still wrapped in 
their winter kimonos of straw and it seemed to 
Ume that they knew about her disobedience. The 
cherry trees and the dwarf pine trees waved their 
branches backward toward the house. 

She passed the little hill, the pond with its bridge, 
and the stone lantern, and she remembered that one 
day her father had told her that they all stood for 
obedience. But she ran forward, shaking her 
naughty little head as if to shake away every good 
influence. 

At the farther end of the garden a tiny gateway 
led into her cousin Tei’s garden, through which 
she ran to the house. 

Tei was standing on the veranda bouncing a ball. 

“ Come, Tei,” said Ume. “ Let us go to the 
street of shops and buy some sweets. It is my 
birthday and I have ten sen.” 

Tei was so much in the habit of obeying that she 


Ume’s birthday 


II 


obeyed Ume, and the two little girls went into the 
city streets, where they found so many things to 
interest them that Ume quite forgot her koto prac- 
tice. 

It was not a common thing for the two children 
to wander away in this manner. They had so many 
playthings and so much room in the two gardens 
that they were quite contented to play together 
at home all day long after they had finished their 
house duties and the lessons at school were over. 

To-day the children were to have a holiday ; and 
while Ume’s mother thought she was at Tei’s house, 
Tei’s mother thought her little daughter was at her 
cousin Ume’s. 

It was the middle of the afternoon before the two 
little girls returned home. They went first to the 
street of toy-shops and Ume bought a big red ball 
and a fairy-story book full of the most delightful 
pictures. 

Then they sat down on the temple steps to look 
at the pictures, and would have read the story, too, 
but in a moment a man came down the street with 
a crowd of merry children following him. He 
stopped in front of Ume and quickly made five or 
six butterflies out of pieces of colored paper he 
took from his sleeve pocket. 

The man blew the butterflies up into the air and 
kept them flying about by waving a big fan. At 


12 UME SAN IN JAPAN 

last he made a beautiful yellow one light on Tei’s 
hair. 

“ Keep it,” said Ume, “ it will bring good luck,” 
and she gave the man a rin for it. 

At one of the booths near the temple she bought 
two baked sweet potatoes and some rice-cakes, 
and the little girls ate their luncheon, holding the 
crumbs for the pigeons that flew down to eat from 
their outstretched hands. 

Now the sen were all spent; but there were still 
many pleasant things for the two little girls to do. 
They ran down to the pond in the temple garden 
to look at the goldfish. Then they played a game 
with the new ball, and watched a group of boys 
playing marbles. They even played blind-man’s- 
buff with some of the other children, and were 
really very happy. 

Perhaps they would not have thought to go home 
at all if Ume had not remembered the tea-party 
in honor of her birthday. Her father was to come 
home from his shop earlier than usual, so that 
the family might drink tea together. 

“ Come, Tei,” she said at last, “ it is nearly the 
hour of tea-drinking. Let us go home.” 

Obedient Tei turned at once, saying only, “ It 
would have been good to read the fairy story in 
the picture-book.” 

But Ume had not heard what Tei said. For the 



Boys Playing Marbles. Page 12 





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ume’s birthday 


13 


first time in many hours she was thinking of the 
koto practice. 

“Did you ever do anything disobedient, Tei?” 
she asked. 

Tei thought very hard for a few moments. 
“ Yes,” she said at last, “ I once put the cherry 
blossoms into the chrysanthemum vase when the 
honorable mother told me not to do so.” 

Ume looked at Tei in surprise. “ But how could 
you ? ” she asked. “ They must have hurt your 
intelligent eyes after you put them there.” 

Tei shook her head. “ I thought they looked 
pretty,” she confessed. 

Ume looked doubtful. After a moment she said, 
“ I could never have put them in that vase ; it would 
have looked wrong from the first. But I ran away 
from my koto practice to-day, perhaps that was 
just as bad.” 

It was Tei’s turn to look surprised. “ How 
could you do it ? ” she asked in horror. “ All the 
gods will talk about you.” 

Ume shook her head. “ It was not hard to do 
it,” she said, “ and it is true that I have not thought 
about it in this whole beautiful day. I do not un- 
derstand why.” 

“ It is because there have been so many other 
things to think about,” said Tei; but she went 
home and told her mother that she thought Ume 


14 UME SAN IN JAPAN 

would feel the displeasure of the gods because of 
her disobedience. 

As for Ume, she said nothing about it at first. 
Her father was at home and the little girl slipped 
out of her clogs and into the room like a gay 
butterfly. 

“ I have returned, honorable Father,” she said, 
fluttering to her knees and spreading her kimono 
sleeves as widely as they would go above her head. 
At the same time she bobbed the saucy little head 
upon a mat. Once would have been quite enough, 
but Ume did it several times. 

“ That will do,” said her father at last. 

He saw that the child was excited. Ume’s grand- 
mother saw it also and spoke reprovingly. “ Little 
girls should never behave in a way to draw the 
honorable eyes of their parents upon them in dis- 
pleasure,” she said. 

But Ume had discovered the tray of gifts stand- 
ing on the floor. There were several packages, 
each neatly wrapped in white paper with a bit of 
writing on it, and tied with red and white paper 
ribbons. 

Before she touched them Ume made a deep bow 
before her grandmother, saying, “ Truly, thanks ! ” 
Then to her father she said, “ O Chichi San, have 
I your generous permission to open the packages ? ” 

The permission was given and happy little Ume 


ume’s birthday 


15 


knelt on the floor beside the tray and opened one 
package after another. From every one she took 
first a tiny piece of dried fish wrapped in colored 
paper, which is nearly always given with a present 
in Japan. 

“ These are for good luck,” she said, and placed 
the bits of fish carefully in a little lacquered box. 

Of course there was the envelope of paper hand- 
kerchiefs from her grandmother. There was also 
a beautiful new kimono from her mother, and from 
her father there was a hairpin with white plum 
blossoms for ornament. 

Tara gave her a doll dressed in a kimono like 
her own new one. “ I kept it in the godown for 
a whole week of days,” he told her. 

“ Yes,” said the mother softly, “ and it was not 
very hard to make such a small kimono secretly.” 

“ I shall call her Haru,” said Ume, “ because she 
Fas come to me in the first days of the honorable 
springtime.” 

“ On the day that I brought the hairpin home and 
hid it in your mother’s sleeve,” said her father with 
a smile, “ I felt deeply deceitful.” 

Suddenly Ume felt very unhappy. She looked at 
all the loving faces and remembered that she, too, 
had this very day been most deceitful. 

“ Now let us look at Ume’s plum tree,” said the 
grandmother. 


l6 UME SAN IN JAPAN 

All the family rose from the floor and followed 
the good father into the garden. Yuki San toddled 
along on her wooden clogs, and behind the baby 
marched tailless Tama, keeping a sharp eye on the 
baby’s hands. Tama did not like the feeling of 
those little hands. 

They stopped under the plum tree and the father 
pointed to the branches. Ume looked, and the sight 
of the tree sent the blood into her face and then 
out of it. The buds all over the branches were 
shyly shaking out their white petals. 

Ume heard her father say, “We must now write 
fitting poems and fasten them to the heavenly-blos- 
soming branches.” She saw all the family go back 
into the house for the brushes, ink and slips of pa- 
per, but she remained under the tree. She was too 
unhappy to make poems, and she felt sure that no 
thought of hers could be pleasing to the gods at 
this time. 

“ Benten Sama heard my prayer,” she whispered ; 
“ and while I was disobedient, the plum tree has 
blossomed.” 

In a few moments her mother returned to the 
garden. 

“ Condescend to hear my unworthy poem,” she 
said, and read it aloud from a slip of paper. “ The 
illustrious sun called to the brown buds and the 
blossoms obeyed.” 


ume’s birthday 


17 

Ume hung her head. She only, it seemed, had 
been disobedient ; even the buds had obeyed the call 
of the sun. 

Just then Tara ran from the house. “ My mis- 
erable poem is about the lovely sunset,” he said, and 
read, “ The joyful blossoms blush under the rosy 
glances of the sunset sky.” 

The father took the poems and fastened them to 
a branch of the tree. As he did so he looked down 
at his little daughter. “ What unhappy thought 
clouds your face, Ume-ko ? ” he asked gently. 

Ume began to cry. It was a long time since she 
had done such a thing. Little Japanese children 
are always taught not to permit their faces to show 
either grief or anger; but Ume’s tears fell in spite 
of all her efforts to keep them back. 

At the sight of her tears a silence fell upon the 
whole family. Even little Yuki looked at her in 
surprise as she told the story of her disobedience. 

It was the grandmother who spoke first. 

“ Our spirits are poisoned that you have been so 
forgetful of our teaching,” she said ; “ but I have 
learned many things in my long life. It is our hon- 
orable privilege to forgive your disobedience, if 
you are truly sorry for it, because this is your 
birthday.” 

Little Ume counted that forgiveness as the best 
of all her birthday gifts. 


CHAPTER III 


TEI BUYS A DOLL 

“ A whole year of months is a very long time, 
is it not, Ume ? ” 

“ Yes, Tei.” 

“ Would you like to stay shut up in a dark room 
as long as that, the way the dolls do ? ” 

“ No indeed, Tei, and I would not stay shut up. 
I would find some way out and would run away.” 

“ Just as we did on your birthday,” said Tei. 

“ Oh, Tei, why did you speak of that? I had 
put that unworthy memory away in a dark place 
with all my other bad deeds and was never going 
to think of it again.” 

“ Just as we put away the dolls in the godown 
after the Dolls’ Festival is over, Ume? ” 

Ume laughed. “ I had not thought of that, but 
it is so,” she said. 

All the time the two little girls were talking they 
were busily preparing breakfasts for their dolls. 
They had five or six small trays and on each one 
they placed chopsticks and bowls, and cups about 
as big as thimbles. 

The room in which they were playing was the 
honorable guest room, the best one in the Utsuki 


TEI BUYS A DOLL 


19 


house. On one side of the room was a sight to 
make any little girl jump for joy. As many as five 
long shelves had been placed along the wall, ar- 
ranged one above another like steps, and more than 
one hundred dolls were grouped on the shelves. 

“ Here are dolls of all honorable sizes! Ten sen 
for each, and all honorable prices ! ” chanted Ume, 
just as she had heard the toy-peddler cry. 

There were indeed dolls of all sizes and kinds. 
There were big dolls and little dolls, boy dolls and 
girl dolls. Some were over a hundred years old, 
and others looked quite new. 

On the top shelf stood five emperors with their 
empresses, and on the lowest shelf, among the toys, 
Haru was standing beside a new doll which Ume’s 
mother had given her for this Dolls’ Festival. 

This festival, on the third day of the third month, 
is the most important one of the whole year to 
little Japanese girls. For nearly a week Ume and 
her mother had been busy preparing for this festi- 
val. They had set the shelves in place, covered 
them with -gorgeous red cotton crepe, and had then 
brought boxes and boxes and bags and bags of dolls 
and toys from the godown. 

The godown is the fireproof building which may 
be seen in almost every Japanese garden. It is 
built of brick or stone, usually painted white, and 
has a black tiled roof and a heavy door which is 


20 


UME SAN IN JAPAN 


always shut and locked. If the family is a very 
wealthy one, with a great many treasures, the go- 
down must be large; if there are but few treasures 
the. building may be smaller. 

It is quite necessary to have some such place, 
which cannot easily be destroyed, because Japan 
is so often visited by earthquakes, and in the cities 
there are often terrible fires. Perhaps this explains 
why the Japanese have so little furniture and so few 
ornaments in their houses. 

“ I hope that there will not be a fire or an earth- 
quake while the dolls are in the house,” said Ume, 
standing off to see if there were a pair of chopsticks 
on each tray. 

“ How many dolls are there on the shelves ? ” 
asked Tei. 

“ I don’t know,” answered Ume. “ There are all 
of mine and my mother’s and my mother’s mother’s. 
And again there are some of her mother’s mother’s. 
And besides that there are some of her mother’s 
mother’s, and so on, and so on, — to the time of 
Confucius.” 

“ That can’t be quite true, Ume,” said Tei, who 
was always very exact in her statements.' “ Con- 
fucius lived many hundred years ago, and I don’t 
think there is a doll in all Japan as old as that.” 

“ I said, 4 and so on and so on/ ” said Ume. “ If 
you keep on you must get to Confucius some time.” 


TEI BUYS A DOLL 


21 


She filled the little dishes with rice-cakes for the 
dolls’ breakfasts while she talked, and Tei poured 
tea into the tiny cups. 

“ Oh, Ume, when your words once make an hon- 
orable beginning they always have trouble in find- 
ing an end.” 

“ Oh, Tei, sometimes it might be well if your own 
words were sooner to find an honorable end.” 

Tei laughed and changed the subject. “ I have 
heard,” she said, “ that there is a country where 
the little girls do not have a Dolls’ Festival.” 

“ Yes,” answered Ume, “ I also have heard as 
much, and that they sometimes give away their 
dolls when they are too old to play with them.” 

“ Give them away ! Give the dear dolls away ! ” 
cried Tei, fairly choking with horror. 

“ Yes, but perhaps they do not respect them as 
much as we do,” said Ume, as she placed a break- 
fast tray before an emperor and empress on their 
throne. 

“ There must be some reason for it,” said Tei. 
“ Of course they cannot have a Dolls’ Festival if 
they do not keep their dolls. But still there is no 
need to keep the dolls if they never have a festival.” 

The two children stood back and looked at the 
shelves. On the step below the emperors knelt the 
court musicians, some playing on the koto, some 
on the samisen, and others beating tiny drums. 


22 


UME SAN IN JAPAN 


There were also many court ladies, dressed in lovely 
silks and crepes, their black hair fastened with 
jeweled hairpins. 

“Are they not beautiful ?” asked Tei, clasping 
her hands. 

Ume looked tenderly at the lower shelves, where 
the more common dolls and toys were placed. 
“ These are like the people we see every day, and 
I love them,” she told Tei ; “ but when I look at 
the emperor dolls it makes me think of our own 
beloved Emperor, and I would give up all my toys 
for him.” 

“ Yes,” said Tei, “ I would give my life for him.” 

At that moment she caught sight of a baby doll 
tied to the back of its nurse, and it reminded her 
of something very pleasant. 

“ I held my new baby brother in my arms this 
morning,” she said. 

“ I am glad of the honorable baby,” said Ume, 
“ because now you are permitted to share the Fes- 
tival of the Dolls with me.” 

“ Yes,” added Tei, “ and I am also permitted to 
go to the shops to-day and buy a new doll. See all 
the sen the august father gave me this morning,” 
and Tei took a handful of coins from her sleeve 
pocket. 

Ume clapped her hands. “ We will go as soon 
as all the dolls have had their breakfast,” she said. 


TEI BUYS A DOLL 23 

“ I will strap Haru on my back, and you shall strap 
your new doll on your back, and we will play that 
they are truly babies.” 

She sprang to her feet as she said it, and danced 
up and down the room, clapping her hands and 
singing a queer little tune. 

“ I have the most honorably best time in the 
whole year when the Dolls’ Festival comes,” she 
cried. 

It was not to be wondered at. Then all the dolls 
and toys and games that little girls love to play 
with are set out on the shelves in the honorable 
guest room ; and for three days they have a holiday 
from school and play all the day long. 

The doll-shops are always merry with children 
waiting to buy dolls and crowded with dolls wait- 
ing to be bought. But there were so many inter- 
esting things to see in the streets that Tei and Ume 
were a long time in reaching the doll-shop. 

Once they stopped to watch the firemen who ran 
past them on their way to a fire. 

The fire-stations in Tokio are tall ladders which 
are made to stand upright in the street, with a tub 
at the top in which the watchman sits. This tub 
looks like a crow’s-nest on the mast of a vessel. 
Beside it is a big bell which the watchman strikes 
when he sees a fire anywhere. 

The firemen run through the streets headed by a 


24 


UME SAN IN JAPAN 


man carrying a large paper standard, which they 
place near the burning house. They are very help- 
ful in saving the women and children, but as they 
dislike to desert their standard they are not always 
of much use in putting out the fire. 

House-owners give the firemen a great many 
presents to keep them faithful to their duty. 

As the two little girls watched the men running 
to the fire with a little box of a hand-engine, and 
with the beautiful standard in the lead, they thought 
it a fine sight. 

“ Tara says he is going to be a fireman when he 
grows up,” said Ume. “ He says it is because a 
fireman gets so many presents.” 

Tei shook her head. “ It is a sad thing when 
a fire burns a thousand houses as it did in our city 
last year,” she said. “ I do not like to think of it.” 

“ We need have no fear,” said Ume lightly. “ Our 
fathers have extra houses packed away in their 
godowns.” 

“ That is true,” said Tei, “ but many others are 
not so wisely fortunate.” 

Just then they reached the doll-shop and the fires 
were forgotten. 

“ Oh, the lovely dolls ! ” cried Ume clapping her 
hands. 

There were a hundred bright kimono sleeves 
pushing and reaching toward the shelves of dolls in 


TEI BUYS A DOLL 


25 


the shop. There were fifty little Japanese girls 
chattering together about the smiling face of one 
and the beautiful silk kimono of another. 

The click of wooden clogs, the clank of Japanese 
money, and the merry talk of the children, all try- 
ing to be heard at the same time, made it a jolly 
affair. 

The doll chosen by Tei was the one which was 
being admired by two other little girls at the same 
moment. It was a boy baby with pink cheeks and 
black eyes and a little fringe of very black hair; 
and it was dressed in a lovely red silk kimono cov- 
ered with yellow chrysanthemums. 

“ It is very like the new brother at home,” said 
Tei, as she counted out the sen and gave them to 
the doll-shopman. 

Then she strapped the doll on her back and the 
two little girls went home slowly, talking of the 
wonderful baby brother who had come to Tei’s 
house the week before. 

“ The house has to be very quiet, because the 
honorable baby is not yet well/’ said Tei. “ He 
has been very ill. I could not have gone with you 
to the city streets on your birthday if the baby 
had been well. Every one was glad to have me 
out of the house, so that it might be kept very still.” 


CHAPTER IV 


THE DOLLS’ FESTIVAL 

When Ume and Tei reached home, carrying their 
dolls on their backs, they found Yuki on the 
veranda. 

“ My geta ! Yuki’s geta ! ” the baby called as 
soon as she saw her sister coming down the garden 
path; and she stood on one clog and held up the 
other little white-stockinged foot. 

Small as she was, Yuki-ko could slip her feet into 
her wooden clogs without any help when she could 
find them ; but Sake, the dog, generally found them 
first and as there was never a bone for him to hide, 
he liked to hide the tiny shoes. 

Now, as usual, one of the clogs was missing from 
the flat step where the baby had last left it. 

“ Perhaps it is under the plum tree, O Yuki 
San,” said Ume, and ran to find it, but it was not 
there. 

“ What a pity that Sake makes us so much trou- 
ble! ” she said to Tei. “ It is plain to be seen that 
the good dog Shiro was no ancestor of his.” 

“ What good dog Shiro?” asked Tei. 

“ The dog of the man who made the dead trees 


THE DOLLS’ FESTIVAL 


27 


to blossom,” answered Ume as she looked under 
the quince bushes; but the missing clog was not 
there. Several days later the gardener found it 
buried under the bush of snow blossoms ; but Ume 
gave up looking for it when she did not find it in 
any of Sake’s favorite places. 

“ It is such a long time since I heard the story 
of the good man who made trees blossom, that I 
have nearly forgotten it,” said Tei; but Ume was 
talking to Yuki. 

“ Be happy, little treasure-flower,” she said to the 
baby. “ You shall have a new pair of clogs ; and 
you may come with us now and help serve tea to 
the honorable dolls.” 

Baby Yuki forgot her clogs at once. She knelt 
upon the floor and held up her tiny hands for the 
tea-bowl. 

“ Oh, Ume ! She is too little to whip the tea,” 
said Tei when she saw that her cousin meant to 
give the baby a bowl of tea powder and a bamboo 
brush with which to whip it into foam. 

“ I will watch her,” answered Ume. “ It may 
be that the dolls forget all they learn about the tea- 
ceremony when they are shut up in the godown for 
a whole year. While I am teaching Yuki San, they 
may learn it all over again by most carefully watch- 
ing us.” 

Tei laughed. “ The illustrious dolls always be- 


28 


UME SAN IN JAPAN 


have most honorably well/’ she said. “ Perhaps it 
is because they do not forget from year to year, 
but spend all their time in remembering.” 

Just then there was a happy little gurgle from 
the baby. 

Ume turned quickly to see what she was doing. 
“O Yuki San! Yuki San!” she cried, running 
to the rescue. 

But it was too late ! While Ume had been talk- 
ing with Tei, the baby had been pouring the tea 
over her head. She was still holding the bowl 
above her head when Ume looked, and the water 
was still trickling down over her hair and into her 
eyes. 

She smiled sweetly up into Ume’s face. “ The 
honorable fountain ! ” she said. 

“ The Japanese tea-ceremony has nothing to do 
with the honorable fountain in the garden,” said 
Ume as she clapped her hands for old Maru, the 
nurse. 

“ Naruhodo ! ” said old Maru, as she brought 
towels and wiped the tea from the baby and the 
mat with many exclamations of amazement. 

“Naruhodo!” she repeated, as she watched the 
two older children try to teach something of the 
tea-ceremony to the baby. 

But Yuki San was soon tired of sitting still. She 
like to watch the tea powder foam in the bowl, but 


THE DOLLS’ FESTIVAL 


29 


when she tried to put her tiny hands into the dish 
and play they were fishes, Ume gave her a doll 
and sent her off to play by herself. 

“ It will never do for the dolls to see such un- 
worthy actions,” Ume told Tei. “ They will think 
it is all a part of the august tea-ceremony.” 

It was much easier to teach the dolls without the 
baby’s help, and there was everything to teach them 
with. There was a toy kitchen with its charcoal 
brazier, its brushes and dishes. There was a toy 
work-box with thread, needles and silk. 

There were toy quilts and wooden pillows and 
flower vases; and there were toy jinrikishas with 
their runners. 

Ume and Tei taught the dolls the proper bowings 
for the street and those for the house. They 
changed the food on the trays, and taught the girl 
dolls that they must most carefully wait upon 
the boy dolls, as Ume herself had been taught to 
wait upon Tara, although she was older than her 
brother. 

Ume even read aloud with much emphasis from 
the “ Book of Learning for Women”: “ Let the 
children be always taught to speak the simple truth, 
to stand upright in their proper places, and to listen 
with respectful attention.” 

There are many other directions in the book, all 
of which the little women of Japan learn by heart. 


30 


UME SAN IN JAPAN 


Ume would have read many of the rules to the 
dolls, but her mother called both children to leave 
their play and go with the grandmother and old 
Maru to listen to story-telling in the street of 
theaters. 

“ It is a very different thing to tell the simple 
truth at one time and to listen to honorable stories 
at another,” said Ume to the dolls as she left them. 

In the street of theaters are many little booths in 
which there are men who tell the most enchanting 
stories. Sometimes they tell fairy stories, some- 
times ghost stories, and sometimes stories of Japa- 
nese gods and heroes. Ume and Tei liked the fairy 
stories best of all. 

“ The old man in this booth tells fairy stories 
faithfully well,” said the grandmother as they 
stopped before a tiny house decorated with paper 
parasols and lanterns, and with a long red banner 
floating above it from a bamboo pole. 

“ Honorably deign to enter,” said a little woman 
crouching at the door. 

Maru gave the woman four sen and the little 
party entered and joined a group of about twenty 
women and girls who were seated on mats in front 
of the story-teller. 

“ Hear, now, the story of the good old man who 
made dead trees to blossom ! ” said the story-teller, 
waving his fan over his head and then clapping it 


THE DOLLS’ FESTIVAL 3 1 

in his hand three times to call attention to his 
words. 

Ume and Tei looked at one another and clasped 
their hands beneath their chins. 

“ Just what we were respectfully speaking about 
in the morning hour ! ” murmured Tei. 

Ume nodded and would have said something in 
answer, but her grandmother said “ Hush ! ” 

“ Once upon a time two men lived side by side 
in a little village,” said the story-teller, looking at 
Ume. Ume again nodded her head. She knew 
the story perfectly well, but the Japanese children 
love to hear the same stories told over and over 
again. 

“ One of these men was kind and generous,” con- 
tinued the story-teller. “ The other was envious 
and cruel. Neither one of them had any children 
to pay them honor in their old age; but the kind 
man and his wife were always doing good. One 
day they found a dog which they took to their home 
and taught as they would have taught a child, to be 
obedient and faithful. <© 

“ They named the dog Shiro, and fed him with 
the mochi cake which tastes best after the New 
Year is made welcome with much joy and cere- 
mony.” 

Ume and Tei nodded and smiled at one another. 

“ But Shiro knew nothing about the New Year 


32 


UME SAN IN JAPAN 


festival,” went on the story-teller. “ He was happy 
all the day long in following the good old man 
about and getting a kind pat from the gentle hand. 

“ One day he began digging for himself in a cor- 
ner of the garden. Scratch ! went his two paws as 
fast as he could make the dirt fly, and the good old 
man took his spade and dug in the spot to find what 
could be hidden in the dirt. 

“ He was rewarded by finding an honorable quan- 
tity of coins ; enough to keep him and his wife com- 
fortable for many months. 

“ But the envious man, the unworthy neighbor, 
hearing of this good fortune, asked to borrow the 
dog. 

“ ‘ Yes, truly/ answered the other and sent Shiro 
home with his neighbor, although the obedient 
creature had always been driven away from the 
neighbor’s gate with sticks and harsh words. 

“ ‘ Now you must find treasure for me/ said the 
bad man who knew nothing about kindness to ani- 
mals, for he pushed the poor dog’s nose into the 
earth so deeply that Shiro was nearly smothered. 

“ The dog did truly begin scratching, but when 
the cruel man dug in that place, he found nothing 
but rubbish, which so enraged him that he killed 
the obedient animal and buried his body under a 
pine tree. 

“ At last the good man, wondering why Shiro 


THE DOLLS’ FESTIVAL 


33 


did not return, went to his neighbor and asked the 
reason. ‘ Ah, he was a bad dog ! ’ answered the 
other. ‘ He would find nothing but rubbish in the 
ground for me, and so I killed him and he lies under 
the pine tree.’ 

“ ‘ It was a great pity to kill him,’ said the good 
man. ‘ We should be kind to all animals, because 
it may be that the souls of our ancestors return 
and live in their bodies.’ 

“ ‘ What is done cannot now be helped,’ the bad 
neighbor answered. 

“ So Shiro’s master bought the tree, cut it down 
and took it home.” 

Ume and Tei nodded again. The mystery was 
to begin in the story and they drew closer to the 
grandmother. 

“ The spirit of the little dog spoke to his master 
in the night,” said the story-teller, “ and told him to 
make a tub from the pieces of the tree. It must 
be just such a tub as the mochi-makers use at New 
Year’s time, and in the tub the old man must make 
mochi for Shiro. 

“ So the good old man did as he was bidden, 
thinking to put some of the cakes before the tablet 
on the god-shelf as an offering to the spirit of the 
obedient dog. 

“ But when he put the barley into the tub and 
began to pound it, the quantity of barley increased 


34 


UME SAN IN JAPAN 


until there was all that the man and his wife could 
use for their needs for a long time. 

“ This also, the envious neighbor saw, and he 
borrowed the tub as he had borrowed the dog, 
thinking to have as much barley meal for himself. 

“ But although the tub overflowed with the grain, 
it was all worthless ; so poor that no one could eat 
it. A second time the man was angered and he 
pounded the tub to pieces in his rage. 

“ The patient old man gathered up the pieces 
and used them for fire-wood, saving the ashes as 
the spirit of Shiro directed him to do. 

“ In his garden there was an old dead tree. The 
spirit of the dog bade him sprinkle some of the 
ashes upon the branches of this tree and he obedi- 
ently did so. 

“ Immediately, pop ! The branches were suddenly 
covered with beautiful double cherry blossoms. 

“ People from far and wide flocked to see the 
sight, and among them was a prince who begged the 
old man to do the same thing for one of his trees 
which had long been dead. 

“ When his tree blossomed as the first had done, 
he was so pleased that he gave the old man many 
valuable gifts of silk and rice and sent him home, 
to be known as the 4 old man who could make dead 
trees blossom.’ ” 

When the story-teller finished, he disappeared be- 


THE DOLLS’ FESTIVAL 


35 

hind a red curtain and there was nothing for Ume 
and Tei to do but go home. 

“ It is a gooddhing that the story was no longer,” 
said Ume, “ because Tara is going to help me build 
a toy garden for my dolls.” 

Tara helped to build the garden, to be sure, but 
the two little girls waited upon him and listened 
to him, and not once forgot that in Japan girls 
and women must follow their brothers. They must 
never try to lead them. 

“ Go and get the spade from the garden-house, 
Ume,” Tara said to his sister. “ Bring some small 
stones from the rockery,” he told Tei, and both lit- 
tle girls obeyed without a word. 

At the end of the third day of the Dolls’ Festival 
there was a charming toy garden at one end of the 
veranda. In the garden there was a tiny lake bor- 
dered with flowering shrubs, a little hill with trees 
growing around it, a path leading to the lake be- 
side which grew peach trees in full bloom, and there 
were even two tiny stone lanterns and a little temple 
on the hill. 

It had been a wonderful holiday for the little 
girls and they were sorry that it was all over, but 
they cheerfully helped to pack the dolls and toys 
away in boxes and carry them back to the godown. 


CHAPTER V 


A VISIT TO THE TEMPLE 

“ O Haha San,” said Ume, “ when we took little 
Yuki San to the temple for the first time, with 
whom did I sit in the jinrikisha? ” 

“ It is not strange that you have no memory of 
it, little Plum Blossom,” said her mother. 

“ Why, honorable mother ? ” 

“ Because you were ill from eating too many 
sweets the day before, and had to stay at home in 
your bed.” 

Ume laughed. “ Now I do remember it,” she 
said. “ My unworthy head danced like a geisha 
girl when I tried to stand on my two feet.” 

Ume’s mother looked at her little daughter re- 
provingly. “ Do not speak so easily of such girls. 
Ume-ko,” she said. 

“ Was Tara taken to the temple when he was 
thirty days old ? ” 

“ Yes, my daughter.” 

“ But, Mother San, with whom did I ride then ? ” 

“ With O Ba San.” 

“ I wish I could go to-day with Tei,” said Ume. 



Ume Riding in a Jinrikisha 


Page 37. 


+JI 





A VISIT TO THE TEMPLE 


37 


“ It is time for them even now to begin the jour- 
ney,” answered her mother. “ You may perhaps 
ride in the same jinrikisha with your little cousin.” 

Ume made a deep bow to her mother, slipped into 
her clogs at the veranda step, and ran swiftly 
through the garden to her cousin’s house. 

Everything there was in a great state of excite- 
ment. The new baby, dressed in a most gorgeous 
red silk kimono with the family crest embroidered 
on the back and sleeves, was going to make his 
first visit to the temple. 

“ Yes, you may come with me,*’ said Tei to Ume, 
after asking the honorable father’s permission. 

The pale little mother leaned back in her jinrik- 
isha beside the nurse who carried the beautiful boy. 

The father, very proud to have a son who would 
carry on the family name, rode in the first jinrik- 
isha, and the little party took their way to the 
famous Kameido Temple in the eastern part of the 
city. 

“It was not until three days ago that the baby 
was well enough to have his head shaved,” Tei con- 
fided to Ume. 

“ But I thought it must always be done on the 
seventh day,” said Ume. 

Tei shook her head. “ The august father com- 
manded that it should not be done,” she said. “ The 
baby was so frail that there have been no visits 


38 UME SAN IN JAPAN 

from anyone since he was first seen in our house.” 

“ Then the baby might just as well have been a 
girl,” said Ume decidedly. 

“Oh no!” said Tei. “There have been dozens 
of presents of rice and silk, and many other things. 
And there have been letters of congratulation. And 
to-day, when we return from the temple, many, 
many people will come to see the baby, because they 
could not come before.” 

“ What name was given to the- baby on the 
seventh day ? ” asked Ume curiously. 

“ He is to be called Onda,” answered Tei. 

Before Ume could ask any more questions they 
had reached the temple. 

Everything seemed to go wrong with Tei. She 
caught her clog as she was getting out of the 
jinrikisha and fell upon her nose. It bled a little, 
just enough to make her say pitifully, “ Oh, how 
truly sad! It will never bring good luck to the 
dear brother.” 

But Ume was always quick at thinking of a way 
out of trouble. Near the entrance to the temple 
stood a deep basin filled with water. With this 
water everybody washes his hands before going 
in to pray. Ume lifted a spoonful of the water and 
rubbed it over her cousin’s nose. “ That will make 
it as well as ever,” she told Tei. 

“ What is that in your other hand ? ” asked Tei, 


A VISIT TO THE TEMPLE 39 

seeing that Ume was using only one hand, and that 
the other was tightly closed. 

“ It is a rice-cake to feed to the goldfish in the 
temple lake. ,, One can always buy rice-cakes at 
the temple gate, but Ume had thoughtfully brought 
one from her home. 

Ume would have almost preferred feeding the fish 
to seeing the ceremony of placing the new baby 
under the protecting care of the patron saint of the 
temple. Baby Onda’s father had chosen the God of 
Learning to be his son’s patron saint. He wished 
to have the child become very studious and know 
thoroughly all the wisdom of Confucius and the old, 
old gods of learning and wisdom. 

Before going into the temple everyone slipped 
out of his clogs, washed his hands, and made several 
bows at the entrance. 

Tei’s father then pulled a rope which rang a bell 
to attract the attention of the god. There was a 
moment when he clapped his hands together three 
times to be sure that the god was listening. After 
that he asked very earnestly that his little son might 
be carefully guarded and guided along the rough 
path of wisdom. Then he clapped his hands twice 
to show that his prayer was ended. 

It was so solemn and impressive to little Ume that 
she forgot her rice-cake and let it drop to the temple 
floor as she clasped her own hands in prayer. 


40 


UME SAN IN JAPAN 


Then followed the gift to the gods, and one to the 
priest of the temple. The priest blessed the new 
baby and he was safely placed under the care of 
Sugawara-no-Michizane, the God of Literature, in 
the Kameido Temple in the city of Tokio. 

The ceremony was not very long. The moment 
it was over Ume and Tei stole as quickly as they 
could out of the temple, and ran down to the lake 
where the goldfish were waiting to be fed. 

Of course they stayed there so long, feeding first 
one fish and then another, and watching them 
spread their fan-like tails and glide away to nibble 
the bits of rice-cake, that Tei’s father came to look 
for them. 

“ We have no more time,” he said gently to them. 
“ Unless we are soon at our unworthy house, all the 
honorable guests will be there before us.” 

The jinrikisha runners were told to hurry home, 
and they obeyed so well that Ume and Tei clung to 
one another and gave little shrieks of delight. 

Hardly had they reached home when the guests 
really did begin to arrive. All the relatives and 
friends came by ones and twos and threes ; some in 
jinrikishas and some on foot, — all who had sent 
presents and all who had waited to bring them. 

Ume and Tei counted the different pairs of clogs 
that were left at the veranda steps, and there were 
over one hundred pairs. 


A VISIT TO THE TEMPLE 


41 


“ Such an illustrious crowd ! ” said Tei, drawing 
in her breath with excitement. 

But there was little time to count and look. The 
two children were needed to help pass tea and cakes 
to the visitors. It was dark before everybody was 
at last gone and the baby’s first party was over. 

“ Baby Onda is tired with so much looking and 
holding and praising,” said Ume to her mother as 
they went home through the gardens. “ He will 
never go to sleep again, or else he will sleep for a 
week of days.” 

“ He is an honorable boy child,” answered her 
mother. “ A boy must learn early to bear hard- 
ships.” 

“ It is no hardship to receive honorable praise,” 
said little Ume. 


CHAPTER VI 


CHERRY-BLOSSOM TIME 

“ The cherry trees in Ueno Park are in full blos- 
som to-day,” read Ume’s father in the morning 
paper. “ The Emperor visited the park yesterday 
to see the beautiful flowers.” _ 

Ume turned from looking at the cherry blossoms 
in the garden to look at her mother who stood on 
the veranda. 

“ Something will honorably give way in my heart, 
O Haha San,” she said. 

“ What do you mean, Ume-ko ? ” asked her 
mother. 

“ My heart is greatly joyous over so many blos- 
soms,” answered the little girl. “ It has grown so 
big that I would feel better if it should take itself to 
the godown and leave me without it.” 

“ Foolish Ume ! ” said her mother, but she smiled 
at the child’s fancy. 

“ The joy began to grow with the first pink buds,” 
Ume went on, “ and now that all the cherry trees 
everywhere are in blossom, — in our garden, in 
Tei’s garden, and in all the gardens; along the 



“The Cherry Trees in Ueno Park are in full Blossom 

Page 42. 







CHERRY-BLOSSOM TIME 


43 


streets and river banks, and in all the parks, my 
heart is bursting with gladness.” 

“ When hearts feel that way,” said her mother, 
“ it is because they wish to offer thanks to the gods. 
We will all go to the temple to-day and leave a gift, 
and then we will go to the beautiful Ueno Park, 
where there will be many others who feel the way 
that you do in their hearts.” 

“ It is the way we Japanese always feel when the 
cherry trees hang out their pink garlands,” said 
Ume’s father. 

Tara was bouncing a ball in the garden and heard 
this talk about the cherry blossoms. 

“ Wait until my festival,” he said, “ and then you 
will see what it is really like to feel gladness.” 

“ Your festival,” said Ume, “ and pray what may 
your honorable festival be ? ” 

“ The fish-tree festival is the one I like,” an- 
swered Tara, and he gave his ball a great toss into 
the air. 

Ume looked puzzled for a moment, then she cried, 
“ Oh, he means the Flag Festival ! ” 

“ Come, children,” interrupted their mother, 
“ find the lunch boxes and help to put all in peaceful 
readiness for our journey to the park.” 

Tara picked up Baby Yuki and gave her a toss 
into the air. In doing so he discovered that she 
had lost her name-label. It is a common thing for 


44 


UME SAN IN JAPAN 


a Japanese child to wear a wooden label tied around 
his neck, on which his name and address are printed. 
Then if he is lost he can be returned to his home. 

Tara made a new label and tied it so firmly 
around the baby’s neck that her tiny fingers could 
not possibly loosen the strings. 

“ Now, O Yuki San,” he said, “ you are all ready 
to go to the park, where you can get lost a dozen 
times if you wish, honorable Sister,” and he gave 
her another toss for good luck. 

In the meantime Ume found that her clog string 
was broken. “ I may as well get a new string for 
each clog,” she said. “ When one breaks, I find that 
the other soon breaks also, for loneliness.” 

But there were no extra strings hanging in the 
clog-closet where some were usually to be found, 
and Ume had a great hunt for them. 

Yuki San, and not Sake, was the thief this time. 
She had put them carefully away in one of the 
drawers of the writing cabinet the day before, when 
she was playing that her shoe was a doll-baby and 
must be tied to her back with its strings. 

By the time they were all dressed in their finest 
clothes, three jinrikishas were waiting at the gate, 
and Tara rode off proudly with his father, while 
Baby San sat beside her mother, and Ume rode with 
her grandmother. 

The streets were crowded with people dressed 


CHERRY-BLOSSOM TIME 


45 


in gay kimonos and carrying paper parasols or fans. 
Some were riding, some were walking, and all were 
happily chatting and laughing. 

“ Is everyone in the whole world going to Ueno 
Park ? ” Ume asked her grandmother, and immedi- 
ately forgot her question in listening to the sounds 
of gongs and tinkling bells that filled the air. The 
joyous sound of bells is always a part of the Cherry- 
blossom Festival in Tokio, and makes the city a very 
merry place. 

The long avenue leading up to the entrance of 
the park, which is on the brow of a high hill, was 
arched overhead with the blossoming branches of 
the cherry trees. 

“ The pink mist almost hides the blue sky,” said 
Ume, “ but the sunshine comes dancing through. 
See how gently it touches the pink petals with its 
rosy light ! ” 

The little party rode through the park looking at 
the cherry trees and watching the crowds of people. 
Ume kept her poor grandmother’s head bobbing to 
right and left as she spoke of one strange sight and 
then another. 

First it was, “ O Ba San, look at the Japanese 
baby in the American baby-carriage. It cannot 
be that he likes it as well as riding on his sister’s 
back.” 

Next it was, “ O Ba San, see the little foreign 


4 6 UME SAN IN JAPAN 

children playing with the cake-woman’s stove.” 

Ume would have liked to stop the jinrikisha man 
and watch the white-faced children as they made 
little batter cakes and fried them over the charcoal. 

“ We must not stop now,” said her grandmother. 
“ Your honorable father will tell us when we may 
stop.” 

Ume came as near pouting as a Japanese maiden 
can. “ I think I have heard that the foreign chil- 
dren tell their fathers when they wish to stop in the 
honorable ride,” she murmured. 

“ They are all barbarians, those foreigners,” said 
her grandmother. “ You can see by the gardens 
of flowers that they wear upon their heads, that 
they know nothing of propriety.” 

Ume, who had never worn a hat in her life, could 
say nothing to that. Every little foreign girl she 
saw was wearing a hat on her head on which there 
were many flowers of half a dozen different colors 
and kinds. Although it was a sight to hurt her 
eyes, Ume would have been glad to leave the jin- 
rikisha and study the dresses of the little foreigners. 
Most of all she wished to join them in their play of 
cake-making. 

“ They must be glad to come to Japan and learn 
so many new ways to be happy, O Ba San,” she 
said. 

The grandmother did not quite understand Ume’s 


CHERRY-BLOSSOM TIME 


47 


way of thinking. “ In what way ? ” she asked. 

“To ride among the beautiful cherry trees, with 
their delicious pink odors, in the beginning,” said 
Ume. “ I know that in no other country can the 
trees be so lovely and hold so many flowers.” 

As if her father knew that Ume longed to see 
something of the foreign children’s play, he stopped 
his own jinrikisha man at that very moment, and 
the rest of his party stopped beside him. 

Under a particularly large and beautiful cherry 
tree a group of both foreign and Japanese children 
were gathered around a peddler who carried a tray 
of candies upon his head. In one hand he held 
a drum and on his shoulder perched a monkey 
dressed in a bright colored kimono. 

The man danced and sang a funny song about 
the troubles of Daruma, a snow man. Once in a 
while he beat the drum, and all the time he was 
jumping and twisting about until it seemed as if his 
tray of candies must surely fall off his head to the 
ground; but it never did. 

When the monkey jumped from his master’s 
shoulder and snatched off one of the boys’ caps, 
putting it on his own head, all the people, big and 
little, screamed with joy. 

By that time a great crowd of merrymakers had 
collected, and Ume’s father told his coolie to go on. 
So the little party started on again, and soon passed 


48 


UME SAN IN JAPAN 


an open space among the trees where Japanese 
fireworks were shooting into the air. The Japanese 
send off their fireworks in the daytime, as well as 
at night, to make their festivals more festive. 

The swish of the quick flight of a rocket into the 
air made every one look up. In a moment a big 
paper bird popped out of the rocket and came sailing 
slowly down to light on the top of one of the trees. 

Then another rocket, and still another, was sent 
up, and from one came a golden dragon with a long 
red tongue and a still longer tail. 

Ume’s father dismissed all of the jinrikisha 
coolies, and after they had watched the fireworks a 
little while, the family went into a tea-house to eat 
their lunch and rest from the confusion. 

As Tara looked out over the gaily dressed crowds 
he said boastfully, “ There can be no other country 
in the world with such fine, brave people.” 

“ It is true that we are a brave people,” his father 
answered. “ Many times, when I was no older than 
you are, little son, has my mother wakened me very 
early in the morning and put a toy sword into my 
hand. * Your companions are out playing the 
sword-game. Join them!’ were her words. And 
although the ground was white with snow, and I 
was very sleepy, I always went as she bade me.” 

Tara looked at his father in admiration. 

“ There has been much fighting with real swords 


CHERRY-BLOSSOM TIME 


49 


here in this very park,” his father continued. 
“ There was once a big battle under these cherry 
trees where you see nothing to-day but crowds of 
happy people with no thought of anything but en- 
joying the Cherry-blossom Festival.” 

“ I shall not be perfectly happy until I have made 
cakes as the foreign children were doing,” said 
Ume. 

In the path outside the tea-house Ume had caught 
sight of a woman with a little charcoal fire in a 
copper brazier, which she thought her father might 
also see. The little old woman was neatly dressed, 
and carried over her right shoulder a bamboo pole 
from which hung the brazier, a griddle, some ladles 
and cake-turners. There was also a big blue and 
white jar of batter and a smaller one of sauce. 

Ume’s father beckoned to the woman, and to the 
children’s joy she brought the things to the tea- 
house door, where Ume was allowed to make cakes 
for the whole family. 

Baby San toddled up the steps with a cake for 
the grandmother. On the way she tumbled down 
and dropped it in the dirt. Then a fresh one had to 
be made and carried very carefully up the steps. 

There were many children, with their fathers 
and mothers, coming and going past the tea-house. 
There were groups of students and parties of young 
ladies; there were jugglers and toy peddlers; and 


50 


UME SAN IN JAPAN 


over everything the cherry trees were scattering 
their falling petals. 

There was a merry-go-round near the tea-house, 
and the crowds of people made it a gay place with 
their fun and frolic. 

It was lucky that Baby Yuki had her tag around 
her neck. Once she slipped beyond her mother’s 
watchful care and was only found after much 
questioning and searching. 

When, at last, she was placed once more in her 
mother’s arms, the grandmother said that it was 
time to go home. 

“ We have seen many cherry blossoms, and Ume’s 
heart must be peacefully small once more,” she said. 
“ It is better to go home before we tire of so much 
merriment.” 

The jinrikisha men trotted all the way home, and 
the happy day was over all too soon. 


CHAPTER VII 


THE FLAG FESTIVAL 

It was the fifth day of the fifth month, which is 
the day of the Flag Festival in Japan. 

Tara slipped out of his wooden clogs and ran 
into the room where Ume was gathering her books 
together for school. “ Baby Onda’s fish is up at 
last,” he shouted, “ and as far as you can see the 
ocean of air is full of fishes. Did I not say that 
the fifth day of the fifth month would be, filled with 
gladness ? ” he demanded. 

“ Yes, Tara, but I have far too much to do to 
talk with you now,” said Ume very primly. 

“ At least you can condescend to come out on the 
veranda just one moment to look at cousin Onda’s 
fish.” 

“ Very well, honorable Brother,” said Ume, and 
she followed him to the veranda. 

Both children laughed aloud at the sight of the 
enormous paper carp flying from the top of the 
bamboo pole on their cousin’s house. The fish was 
at least twenty feet long and was made of strong 
Japanese paper. Its great mouth and eyes were 


52 


UME SAN IN JAPAN 


wide open and it had swallowed so much air that 
it looked filled to bursting, A mighty wind blew 
it this way and that, up and down, making it look 
like a real fish that had been caught with a hook 
and was trying to escape. 

“ Onda’s father is augustly proud because he has 
a son/’ said Ume. “ He has found the biggest fish 
in all Tokio to fly, and the people will know that he 
has only a very little son.” 

“ He will grow larger,” said Tara loyally. 

“ And as he grows larger the fish will grow 
smaller,” answered Ume. “ Your own fish is only 
half as large as Onda’s.” 

From a pole in the Utsuki house flew Tara’s fish, 
while from poles as far as the eye could see flew 
fishes of all sizes and colors. Some poles held two, 
three, or even five or six fishes. There was a fish 
for every boy who lived in every house, and every 
fish was a carp, because in Japan the carp is the fish 
that can swim against the swift river currents and 
leap over waterfalls. 

For the little Japanese girls there is the Dolls’ 
Festival, and for the boys is this Flag Festival, 
when they stay at home from school and play all 
day long. They fly kites, spin tops, tell stories and 
are told tales of the- brave heroes of Japan. 

In the room where the dolls had sat in state for 
the girls there is now a shelf for the boys’ toys. 



There was a Fish for every Boy. Page 52. 


















































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THE FLAG FESTIVAL 


53 


There are many toy soldiers, figures of great heroes, 
men in armor, men wearing helmets and carrying 
swords, and some carrying guns or drawing tiny 
cannon on wheels. Tara had his soldiers arranged 
as if they were fighting a battle, and it was truly 
a most warlike scene. 

The morning had been full of excitement. Tara 
had already observed the day by taking a bath in 
very hot water steeped with iris flowers. He had 
arranged his toys and soldiers. He had been to 
the kite-maker and bought a huge kite decorated 
with a picture of the sun in the brilliant red color 
which is dear to all Japanese children. 

He had also run over in his mind the stories that 
he could remember of Japanese warriors of the 
past, for well he knew that before the day was 
over his mother would question him about them 
all. 

He had also recited his catechism to Ume, and 
had answered bravely all the questions as she read 
them. 

“ What do you love best in the world ? ” 

“ The Emperor, of course.” 

“ Better than your father and mother? ” 

“ He is the father of my father and mother.” 

“ What will you give the Emperor ? ” 

“ All my best toys, and my life when he needs 

it.” 


54 


UME SAN IN JAPAN 


Now he was busy tying a long silk string to his 
kite and getting it ready to fly. 

Ume forgot her school books and ran down the 
garden path to look once more at the bed of iris 
which was now in full bloom beside the brook. 

“ To-morrow I will gather some of the leaves 
and flowers,” she said, “ and arrange them in the 
tall green jar for the alcove. That will keep away 
evil spirits from our home.” 

Then she ran back to the house, making the 
motions of the flying fishes with her hands. 

“ If I were an honorable boy,” she cried, “ I 
would sail away from Japan to every country where 
there are dragons, and kill them all. Then I 
would come back home again and tell all about it, 
so that all the children and their children, as long as 
Japan lasts, would learn about me ! ” 

Tara looked at Ume as contemptuously as a Jap- 
anese boy ever looks at his sister, which is not 
saying much, because in Japan the boys and girls 
are taught to be most polite to each other. 

“ That is not the way of a true patriot,” he said. 
“ We men must stay at home and defend our 
country from enemies that may attack us from 
without. True glory will find us; we do not need 
to run all over the world looking for it, and then 
perhaps, miss it after all.” 

“ Well spoken, my son,” said his father from 


THE FLAG FESTIVAL 


55 


the veranda, where he had heard Tara’s words. To 
Ume he said, “ Our bravest men, the men who have 
given their lives for their country, and whose 
names will ever be spoken with reverence by our 
children’s children, have died in the home-land.” 

He spoke solemnly, and Tara, who adored his 
father, moved close to his side as if to catch his 
brave spirit. 

Ume also loved her father. She was grieved 
that he should speak to her in a tone of rebuke. 
She whirled about and fluttered to his other side, 
nestling under his arm and smiling the sweetest of 
smiles up into his face. 

“Now I see, O Chichi San, why we fly the brave 
carp for our boys,” she said prettily, “ and why we 
steep the hardy iris flower in their bath water.” 

Her father looked down into her face. “ You 
knew that very well before,” he said with a smile. 
“ You have heard of the wonderful strength of the 
carp ever since Tara was born. You know that 
every father who flies a paper carp for his son at 
this festival time does it with the hope that the boy 
will heed the sign and grow courageous and strong 
to overcome every obstacle.” 

But Ume still smiled up into her father’s face. 
She felt that he was not yet quite^pleased with her. 

“ Will you not come home early from the honor- 
able business and tell us stories of the old war 


UME SAN IN JAPAN 


56 

heroes ? ” she asked softly. “ The mother tells 
them faithfully well, leaving out no brave detail, 
but she has never fought, as you have done, for our 
beloved Emperor. It is you alone who can make 
us feel the joy of battle so that even I wish I could 
wear a sword and fight with it for our country.” 

Ume had conquered. Her father put his hand 
upon her head in loving consent. “ When our 
women also are ready to give their lives for Japan,” 
he said, “ the country will never suffer defeat.” 

But Ume told her cousin Tei later in the day that 
one need not always fight to win a victory. 


CHAPTER VIII 


THE SINGING INSECTS 

Ume sat on the edge of the veranda, taking coins 
from a little silk bag and spreading them out before 
her. 

“ Ichi, ni, san, shi, go,” she counted, up to four- 
teen. “ Fourteen sen,” she said. “ If I had one more 
I could buy the kind of singing insect I like best.” 

“ What is that ? ” asked Tara. 

“ It is a kirigirisu.” 

“What shall you buy, then?” asked Tara. 

“ I shall have to buy a suzumushi, and two other 
honorably cheap ones,” Ume told him. 

“ Ask the august father for one more sen,” Tara 
advised. 

But Ume shook her head. “ The august father 
has given me all the sen he has for me this month,” 
she answered. 

“ How do you know ? ” 

“ Because I have already asked for one more sen, 
and that was his honorable answer.” 

“ I have one sen which you may have if you will 
let me call the kirigirisu partly mine,” said Tara. 


58 


UME SAN IN JAPAN 


“ I have a black cricket, a little grass lark, that I 
caught in our own garden last night, and it chirps 
so cheerfully that I do not need to buy any other 
singing insect.” - 

“ It does not matter whose insect it is,” said Ume, 
“ if it only sings.” 

So Tara gave his sen to Ume and she went to 
find Tei, who went with her down to the street of 
shops. There, among numberless other booths, the 
children found one where nothing but singing in- 
sects were for sale. 

The insects were of different colors and sizes. 
Some were black, some were brown and some were 
bright green. The one that Ume chose looked 
much like a brown grasshopper. 

“ He sings most musically in the hours of dark- 
ness,” said the insect merchant. “ While you lie 
in your bed he will say to you, * Tsuzure — sase, 
sase, sase/ ” 

Both little girls laughed at the words, which 
mean, “ Torn clothes — patch up, patch up, patch 
up.” 

“ They are strange words for the honorable in- 
sect-singer,” said Tei. 

Each insect was in a little cage which was made 
of horsehair or fine strands of bamboo. The cages 
were of different shapes and sizes for the different 
kinds of insects. Some were tall and shaped like a 


THE SINGING INSECTS 


59 


bee-hive, some were oblong and others were square. 
Ume’s kirigirisu was in a cage four inches long. 

Tei also had a few sen. She looked at many in- 
sects carefully and finally chose a beautiful bright 
green grasshopper that made a sound like the weav- 
ing of a loom: — “ Ji-i-i-i, chon-chon! Ji-i-i-i, chon- 
chon ! ” 

Then home trotted the two little girls with their 
cunning cages. 

It was a very warm day and the good mother 
was waiting for them with cups of cold tea. She 
looked at the insects and smiled at the baby who 
kotowed an honorable welcome to them. 

“ When I was a child,” she said, “ my unselfish 
mother told me a wise story about those same two 
insects.” 

Immediately the children seated themselves. 

“ We will be most respectfully quiet and listen, 
if you will tell it to us,” said Ume. 

“ Long, long ago,” began the mother, “ when 
Japan was young, there were two faithful and obe- 
dient daughters who supported their blind old 
father by the labor of their hands. The elder girl 
spent all her days in weaving while the other was 
just as industriously sewing. In that way they 
took faithful care of their blind father for many 
years. 

“ Finally the old man died, and so deeply did the 


60 UME SAN IN JAPAN 

two daughters mourn for him that soon they died 
also. 

“ One summer evening a strange sound was heard 
on their graves. It was a new sound that no one 
had ever heard there before, and it was made by 
two little insects which were swinging and singing 
on a blade of grass above the place where the two 
daughters lay. 

“ On the tomb of the elder was a pretty green 
insect, producing sounds like those made by a girl 
weaving, — ‘ Ji-i-i-i, chon-chon ! Ji-i-i-i, chon-chon ! ’ 
This was the first weaver-insect. On the tomb of 
the younger sister was an insect which kept cry- 
ing out, — ‘ Tsuzure — sase, sase! tsuzure — sase 
sase, sase ! * (‘ Torn clothes — patch up, patch up ! 

Torn clothes — patch up, patch up, patch up!’) 
This was the first kirigirisu. 

“ Since that time these same little insects cry to 
every Japanese mother and daughter to work well 
before the cold winter days, to do all the weaving 
and sewing and mending and have the winter cloth- 
ing ready. 

“We used to believe that the spirits of the two 
girls took these shapes,” she ended. 

In the silence that followed the story, Tei’s little 
insect sang, “ Ji-i-i, chon-chon ! Ji-i-i, chon-chon ! ” 
and Ume’s answered, “Tsuzure, sase, sase! Tsuz- 
ure, sase, sase ! ” 


THE SINGING INSECTS 


61 


The night was creeping over the garden. The 
sound of the temple bells rang through the air, 
and little flashes of light twinkled in unexpected 
places. 

The children gathered closer to the mother and 
begged for one more story before bed-time. 

“ Did you ever hear of Princess Splendor? ” she 
asked. 

The children never had heard the story, and their 
mother told it to them. 

“ She was a beautiful little moon-child who came 
down to the world hundreds of years ago. There 
was but one way for her to come, and that was on 
a silver moonbeam. 

“ While she sat on a pine branch resting from her 
journey, a wood-cutter found her and took her to 
his home, where she stayed for many years. 

“ But the Emperor, passing through the forest, 
wondered why the little brown house of the wood- 
cutter shone with such a wonderful glow, and when 
he found that there was a beautiful moon-child 
there, he went to see her. 

“ By day or by night it was just the same with the 
house; it always shone with the glory of the Prin- 
cess Splendor. 

“ Of course the Emperor wished to marry her ; 
but he had been too late in finding her, because 
she was to return to her home in the moon at the 


62 


UME SAN IN JAPAN 


end of twenty years, and the end of the twenty 
years had come. 

“ She begged to stay with the Emperor and began 
to. weep, but it was of no use. The moon-mother 
took her home and tried to comfort her; but her 
tears went on falling, and they take wings to 
themselves as fast as they fall. These fireflies are 
the golden tears of the lovely Princess Splendor.” 

It was quite dark when the story was finished, ■ 
and Tei jumped up. “ I must go home and show 
the intelligent insect to my honorable mother,” she 
said. 

“ Tara and I will walk across the gardens with 
you,” said Ume. 

She reached under the veranda for three slender 
bamboo poles, while Tara ran for candles to put in 
the paper lanterns which hung on the end of the 
poles. 

Soon the three lanterns went bobbing down the 
garden path through the dusk, and the sound of 
happy voices floated back to the mother. 

“ It was of no use ! ” said Ume’s voice. 

“ What was of no use ? ” asked Tara. 

“ Princess Splendor could not marry the right 
prince,” answered Ume. 

The mother smiled, and rising, carried Yuki San 
into the house, while the temple bells were still 
ringing through the twilight. 


CHAPTER IX 


A TRIP TO KAMAKURA 

It was a hot morning in midsummer. The 
veranda shutters had been open all night and the 
shoji had been only half closed so that tiny breezes 
might creep through to cool the pink cheek of Ume 
San, as she lay on the floor under a thin silk cover- 
let. 

All night the kirigirisu had sung in his cage near 
Ume’s bed ; and all night the mosquitoes had buzzed 
and sung outside of Ume’s own cage of green mos- 
quito netting. 

At four o’clock, just as the sun peeped into the 
room, Ume opened her eyes. “ Oh, little kirigi- 
risu,” she whispered, “ I like your singing much 
better than that of the mosquitoes. Gladly would 
I put them all in a cage in the godown.” 

Then she thought of her morning-glories and pat- 
tered out into the garden to look at them. 

“ How lovely they are,” she said, as she touched 
them gently with her fingers. “ This white one 
makes me think of Fujiyama when it is covered 
with snow; and this pink one is like the mountain 
at sunrise.” 

As she spoke, the little girl looked across the city 


64 


UME SAN IN JAPAN 


roofs to where her beloved mountain, Fujiyama, 
lifted its head like an inverted flower, tinged with 
the pink of the rising sun. 

Just then her father came out to took at the 
morning-glories, too, and after the morning greet- 
ings, Ume told him her fancy about Fujiyama. 

“ Your thought is a poem, little daughter,” said 
her father. “ This very day you shall see the 
mountain in all its glory. Here we can see only its 
snow-capped crown, but on the way to Kamakura 
there are wonderful views of our sacred Fuji.” 

After breakfast there were great preparations for 
the journey to Kamakura. First, each one in the 
family, one after the other, had to take a hot bath. 
Then the best kimonos were put on, and the best 
paper parasols were taken out of a long box in 
the godown. 

One servant ran to order the jinrikishas to take 
them to the station. Another packed rice, pickled 
radishes, and tiny strips of raw fish into the lunch 
boxes. 

Ume’s mother was in every part of the house at 
once, and even the grandmother seemed excited at 
the thought of going to the seashore. 

Ume ran across the garden to tell Tei about the 
trip and bid her cousin sayonara, and Tara found 
a box of his best fishhooks and tucked them into his 
sleeve pocket. 


A TRIP TO KAMAKURA 65 

“ I may catch an eel/’ he said, “ and then we can 
have it fried for our dinner.” 

At last the whole family were in the jinrikishas 
and were whirled so fast to the station that they 
had to wait a long time for the train. 

The children were glad to stand on the platform, 
watching the throngs of people and seeing the in- 
teresting sights. Newsboys were running every- 
where calling their papers; strangely-dressed for- 
eigners were hiring jinrikisha-runners to take them 
over the city ; a police sergeant was walking up and 
down; and electric cars were bringing passengers 
to the station with much ringing of bells and clang- 
ing of gongs. 

“ I fear Yuki-ko will not like her first ride in a 
train,” said Ume, as the child hid her face in her 
mother’s kimono at the sight of a big engine. 

“ I well remember my first sight of an engine,” 
said the grandmother. “ When I was a little girl 
there was not a railroad track in all Japan. When 
the first trains ran through the country, the peasant 
women thought the engines were horrible demons, 
and ran screaming away from the puffing and hiss- 
ing” 

“ I, too, remember the first engines,” said the 
father. “ Many were the honorably strange sights 
that went with them. One morning a man took off 
his clogs at this admirable station and set them 


.66 


UME SAN IN JAPAN 


with worthy care upon the platform before he en- 
tered the train. It was his peaceful expectation to 
find them waiting for him when he left the train 
in Yokohama.” 

At that moment an engine came puffing down the 
track, and soon they were all seated in one of the 
open cars and gliding swiftly out of the city. 

The children pointed out to each other the lotus 
blossoms in the moats i the little boats in the canal 
and the freight boats on the Sumida river. 

The father and mother talked about the tea-farms 
and the fields of rice and millet through which they 
were passing. Many crows flew cawing over the 
heads of men and women who were working in the 
deep mud of the rice fields. 

“ Pretty birds ! ” called Baby San. 

“ She means the white herons,” said Tara. Dozens 
of the long-legged herons were stalking about in 
the muddy fields near the track ; and farther away, 
many pieces of white paper fluttered from strings 
which were stretched across the fields of rice. 

Yuki San saw no difference between the birds and 
the fluttering bits of white paper. 

“ Those small white ones scare the unworthy 
crows away, little flower Sister,” explained Tara; 
but the baby sister shook her head and said, “ No, 
pretty birds ! ” 

Ume turned the baby’s head gently away from 


A TRIP TO KAMAKURA 67 

the fluttering scarecrows. a Look at the pretty 
flowers/’ she said. 

Beautiful lotus blossoms were growing in the 
muddy ditches beside the track. The baby bobbed 
her head to them and begged them to stand still, 
but they all hurried past the hands she held out to 
them. 

“ The lotus is Buddha’s flower,” said O Ba 
San. “ It grows out of the dirt and slime to give 
us blossoms of rare beauty. Such may be the 
growth of our hearts if we choke not their good 
impulses.” 

“ It is a long way from Buddha’s flower to his 
mountain,” said Ume, as she looked off to where 
Fuji rose in the distance. 

“ Is it true,” asked Tara, “ that on the days when 
we cannot see the mountain through the mist, it 
is because it has gone on a visit to the gardens of 
the gods ? ” 

“ That is what I always thought when I was a 
child,” his grandmother answered. 

“ And do many pilgrims every year climb the long 
way up its steep sides to the top ? ” 

“ Yes, my child.” 

“ And must I also climb to the top some day, if 
I wish to please the gods ? ” 

“ Yes, unless the gods should honorably please 
to take away your power to climb.” 


68 


UME SAN IN JAPAN 


“ Oh,” gasped Ume, “ I hope the gods will never 
do that!” 

She looked anxiously at her feet and said, “ I 
hope they will never need my feet for anything. 
So unworthily short a time have I used them, that 
they cannot be fit for the gods.” 

“ Let your use of them be always in the service 
of the gods, and the more honorably old they grow, 
the more favor will they find in the sight of the 
gods,” answered her grandmother. 

But Tara did not like such serious talk. “ How 
does the earth get back on the mountain — the earth 
that the pilgrims bring down every day on their 
sandals ? ” he asked. 

“ It is said that it goes back of itself by night,” 
his grandmother replied, and added, “ but I would 
rather speak of the path of straw sandals which the 
pilgrims leave behind them as they toil up the rough 
sides of Fujiyama.” 

“ Then what do they do ? ” asked Ume. 

“ They take many pairs with them, so that when 
one pair is worn out they may have others.” 

“ But I thought the pilgrims were honorably 
poor,” said Ume. 

“ Not always,” said her grandmother. “ And 
sandals cost but an insignificant sum. A pair may 
be bought for a few rin.” 

“ Then I will go myself, some time,” said Ume, 



Fujiyama, the Sacred Mountain. Page 69 




A TRIP TO KAMAKURA 


69 


as if the only reason she had never been to the 
mountain-top was because she had never known the 
price of sandals. 

But before they could say anything more they 
were in Yokohama, where they were to leave the 
train and ride in jinrikishas to Kamakura. 

After they had left this city, with its busy streets, 
its harbor dotted with boats and big foreign ships 
riding at anchor, the road led along a bluff from 
which there was a beautiful view of the bay. 

It was intensely hot and the noonday sun beat 
fiercely down upon them. Ume held a big paper 
parasol carefully over her grandmother, and Tara 
and his father waved their fans slowly back and 
forth to catch the little breezes from the sea. 

In the distance were green fields of rice, little 
vegetable farms, tiny houses, low blue hills, and be- 
yond all, Fujiyama, rising majestically to the clear 
blue sky. 

As they were whirled past a little village they 
heard a deep booming sound, and caught sight of an 
immense drum under an open shed, which was being 
beaten by two men. 

“ What is that? ” asked Tara. 

“ Everywhere there has been no rain and the rice 
is drying in the fields, ,, replied his father, “ so 
drums are beaten and prayers are made to the gods 
that it may rain.” 


70 


UME SAN IN JAPAN 


“ Water is truly desirable/’ said Tara. “ My un- 
worthy throat is this moment as dry as the rice 
fields.” 

“ Not far before us is a rocky pool shaded by an- 
cient pines,” said his father. “ There pure august 
water will be given.” 

The rocky pool was a delightful resting-place. 
The stone basin was filled with water by a spring 
that leaped out of the heart of the cliff. The water 
overflowed the basin and formed a stream which ran 
along beside the road. Many travelers were sitting 
on low benches under the pines, the men smoking 
and the women and children chatting merrily. 

Two women were washing clothes in the brook, 
and Tara and his sisters slipped off their sandals 
and white tabi, tucked up their kimonos and 
splashed about in the water. 

The mother took the food from the lunch boxes, 
spread it on dainty paper napkins and called the 
children to come and eat. 

“ Truly thanks for this honorable food,” said 
Ume, when she finished her luncheon. Then, as 
she looked up at the spring, she added, “ The water 
which comes from the cliff sings a happy little 
song.” 

“ It is like the spring of youth,” said the grand- 
mother. 

“ Deign honorably to tell the story of the spring 


A TRIP TO KAMAKURA 7 1 

of youth,” said the father, taking a pipe from his 
sleeve pocket and filling its tiny bowl. 

“ Long ago a poor wood-cutter lived in a hut 
in the forest with his old wife,” said the grand- 
mother. “ Every day the old man went out to cut 
wood and the woman stayed at home weaving. 

“ One very hot day the old man wandered far- 
ther than usual, looking for wood, and he suddenly 
came to a little spring which he had never seen 
before. The water was clear and cool and he was 
very thirsty, so he knelt down and took a long 
drink. It was so good that he was about to take 
another — when he caught sight of his own face 
in the water. 

“ It was not his own old face. It was the face 
of a young man with black hair, smooth skin and 
bright eyes. He jumped up, and discovered that he 
no longer felt old. His arms were strong, his 
feet were nimble and he could run like a boy. He 
had found the Fountain of Youth and had been 
made young agaim 

“ First he leaped up and shouted for joy ; then 
he ran home faster than he had ever run before 
in his life. His wife did not know him and was 
frightened to see a stranger come running into the 
house. When he told her the wonder she could 
not at first believe him, but after a long time he 
convinced her that the young man she now saw 


72 UME SAN IN JAPAN 

standing before her was really her old husband. 

“ Of course she wished to go at once to the 
spring of youth and become as young as her hus- 
band, so he told her where to find it in the forest 
and she set out, leaving him at home to wait for 
her return. 

“ She found the spring and knelt down to drink. 
The water was so cool and sweet that she drank 
and drank, and then drank again. 

“ The husband waited a long time at home for 
his wife to come back, changed into a pretty, slender 
girl. But she did not come back at all, and at last 
he became so anxious that he went into the forest 
to find her. 

“ He went as far as the spring, but she was no- 
where to be seen. Just as he was about to go back 
home again he heard a little cry in the grass near 
the spring. Looking down he saw his wife’s ki- 
mono and a baby, — a very small baby, not more 
than six months old. 

“ The old woman had drunk so much of the water 
that she had been carried back beyond the time 
of youth to that of infancy. The wood-cutter picked 
the baby up in his arms, and it looked up at him 
with a tiny smile. He carried it home, murmuring 
to it and thinking sad thoughts.” 

The story was finished and the jinrikishas were 
ready to take them on to Kamakura. 



“Nothing can harm the Great Buddha.” Page 73 




A TRIP TO KAMAKURA 


73 


“ I have heard so much about the wonderful 
Buddha that I do not wish to see anything else in 
Kamakura,” said Ume, as they walked through the 
grounds of the long-vanished temple. 

There was no need to tell the children to walk 
quietly and speak reverently before Buddha. 

Ume looked up into the solemnly beautiful face, 
into the half-closed eyes that seemed to watch her 
through their eyelids of bronze, and knelt quietly 
in prayer. 

“ Nothing can harm the Great Buddha,” said the 
father, after the prayers had been said and the of- 
fering given to the priest. “ Six hundred and fifty 
years has he sat upon his throne. Once he was 
sheltered by a temple, but centuries ago a tidal 
wave, following an earthquake, swept away the 
walls and roof and left the mighty god still seated 
on his lotus-blossom throne.” 

As they turned to walk toward the village Ume 
said to her mother, “ When I have heard the thun- 
der I have always thought it was this Great Buddha, 
very angry about something. Now that I have 
seen his peaceful face I know it is not so.” 

“ No,” answered her mother. “ Many thousands 
of girls and boys have seen Great Buddha’s face as 
you saw it to-day. They have grown to be men 
and women, and their children have looked upon his 
face, but it is always calm and peaceful.” 


CHAPTER X 


THE ISLAND OF SHELLS 

From Buddha’s image at Kamakura to Enoshima, 
the island of shells, there is first a ride in jinrikishas 
through the low screen of hills that shuts the little 
village away from the sea; then there is a walk 
across the wet sands if the tide is out, or over 
a light wooden bridge if the waves wash over the 
path. 

It was late in the afternoon when the jinrikisha- 
men trotted down from the hills through a deep- 
cut path to the shore, and Ume could hear the slow 
rollers breaking on the sands before she caught 
her first glimpse of the lovely green island. 

The tide was coming in, but the water was still so 
shallow that the children were permitted to take off 
their sandals and tabi, and patter across the sands 
in their bare feet, while the older people walked 
slowly across the bridge. 

The sands were strewn with lovely shells, left by 
the tide, and Baby Yuki soon had the sleeve pockets 
of her kimono filled full of pearly beauties that 
looked like peach blossoms. 

Tara cared nothing for the shells. He spoke 



(i Ume caught her first Glimpse of the Lovely Green Island.” 

Page 74. 





THE ISLAND OF SHELLS 75 

about the great tortoise which is said to live among 
the caves of the island, and of the bronze dragons 
which twisted around the gate through which "they 
passed to enter the long climbing street of the 
town. 

“ I will ask the august father if we may visit the 
cave of the dragon/’ he said. 

“ Japan must have been full of dragons once/’ 
said Ume. “ Who killed them all ? ” 

“ They turned into the honorable dragon-flies, to 
drive away the mosquitoes/’ answered Tara. 

“ There have been no dragons seen alive in Japan 
since the holy Buddha walked on the mountain,” 
said his father. 

“ Tell us about it, please,” begged Ume. 

“ Long ago,” began the father, “ as Shaka Sama, 
our most holy Buddha, walked on the mountain- 
top at eventime, he looked into the depths below and 
saw there the great dragon who knew the meaning 
of all things. Shaka Sama asked him many ques- 
tions and to them all he received wise answers. 

“ Finally he asked the sacred question which he 
most wished to understand; but the dragon replied 
that, before revealing this last great mystery, he 
must first be fed for his endless hunger. 

“ Shaka Sama promised to give himself to the 
dragon after he should have been told this great 
truth. Then the dragon uttered the sacred mys- 


76 


UME SAN IN JAPAN 


tery and the god threw himself into the abyss as 
he had promised. 

“ But just as the fearful jaws were about to close 
over the holy man, the dragon was changed into a 
great eight-petaled lotus flower which held the 
Buddha up in its cup and bore him back to his place 
on the mountain.” 

“ I thought there was a dragon in the cave at 
Enoshima to guard Benten Sama’s temple,” said 
Ume. 

“ There is no need of a dragon on the island,” 
said her father. “ The fisher boys who pray to her 
for good fortune make faithful guardians of her 
temple.” 

“ Is it to help the fisher boys on sea, as well as un- 
worthy little girls on land, that she has so many 
arms ? ” asked Ume. 

But her father was leading the way along the 
rough street of the beautiful island, and did not 
answer. 

Enoshima seems to be the home of all the shells in 
Japan. They lie heaped in all the houses and 
shops; shells as white and lustrous as moonlight, 
as rosy as dawn, as delicate as a baby’s fingers. 
There are thousands and thousands of them piled 
together like the fallen petals of the pink cherry 
blossoms. 

The street is lined on each side with tea-houses 


THE ISLAND OF SHELLS 


77 


and little shops, and in every one may be seen mir- 
acles of shell-work. There are strings of mother- 
of-pearl fishes, of mother-of-pearl birds, tiny kittens, 
and foxes and dogs. There are mother-of-pearl 
storks and beetles and butterflies, crabs and lob- 
sters, and bees made of shell poised on the daintiest 
of shell flowers, and there are necklaces, pins and 
hairpins in a hundred shapes. 

Baby Yuki went about with her head bent to one 
side, holding her ear to the mouth of the largest 
shells, wherever she could find them. Deep in their 
pink chambers she could hear the sound of the sea, 
and the dull roar pleased her. After listening to 
each one she would look up into her mother’s face 
with a happy smile. 

Their father bought ornaments for the children, 
a necklace of wee, shimmering, mother-of-pearl 
fishes for the baby, a tortoise of pearl-shell for 
which Tara begged, and a spray of shell flowers 
for Ume. 

For Tara he bought also a glass cup blown dou- 
ble, with a tiny shell in the liquid between the 
glass. Of course it was soon broken and, after 
they had climbed the steep steps to the temples and 
prayed to Benten Sama in her own island home, 
they went back to the shops and bought another. 

Afterwards they sat upon the rocks and watched 
the tide flow in from the sea. Over the water 


78 


UME SAN IN JAPAN 


skimmed the white sails of returning boats; the 
dragon’s light, which we call phosphorescence, 
played at the edge of the waves, and there was no 
sound save that of the evening bells. 

The twilight fell, making a gray sky in which 
rode a silver crescent. 

“ The Lady Moon,” whispered Ume, and she 
joined her little hands, bent her head, and gave 
the prayer of welcome to O Tsuki Sama. 

The father broke the stillness at last by telling 
the story of the famous warrior, Yoritomo, who 
made Kamakura a famous city hundreds of years 
ago. 

“ But Kamakura has been burned these many 
years,” he said. “ People come here now only to 
see Great Buddha and Enoshima.” 

“ No,” said Ume, “ I came for something else. 
I came to ask Benten Sama for something which I 
very much wish.” 

“What is it?” asked Tara. 

But Ume shut her lips together and shook her 
head that she would not tell. 

“ Were you afraid she would not hear you any- 
where but in her own temple ? ” he asked again. 

Ume nodded her head. 

“I will surely find out what it was that you 
asked from her,” said Tara mischievously. 

Tara usually did find out Ume’s little secrets in 


THE ISLAND OF SHELLS 


79 


some way, either by making fun or by teasing her. 

“ O Maru San has put an honorable stillness upon 
her august tongue,” he would say with a laugh. 

“ O Maru San ” means “ Honorable Miss 
Round,” and when Tara said it, Ume knew he was 
making fun of her. 

Little Japanese girls and boys do not like to be 
ridiculed. So, when Tara spoke that way, it usu- 
ally ended in Ume’s saying, “ Don’t call me that 
name, Tara. My secret was only about the tea- 
party that Tei and I are going to have in the 
garden.” 

And soon Tara would know just what kind of 
cakes they were going to have; because in Japan 
the cakes are made to suit the season, if one wishes 
to have an elaborate party. 

Then, although it says in the book of “ The 
Greater Learning for Women,” that at the age of 
seven, boys and girls must not sit on the same mat 
nor eat at the same table, Tara was often invited 
to Ume’s tea-parties. 

Now, although they stayed all night at the inn 
at Enoshima and there was plenty of time to find 
out Ume’s secret, she did not tell it, and Tara 
finally concluded that it was something more im- 
portant than a tea-party. 

In the early morning they stood once more upon 
the seashore, to watch the sun rise out of the ocean. 


8o 


UME SAN IN JAPAN 


The children forgot everything else in looking at 
the beautiful sight. “ It is like our noble flag ! ” 
said Tara. 

Japan is called “ The Land of the Rising Sun/' 
and the emblem of the country is a round red 
sun on a white ground. 

The children long remembered the beauty of that 
morning. In front of them the great sun rose in a 
cloudless sky; behind them Fuji lifted his noble 
head, and the blue sea stretched on either side 
as far as they could see. 

At last the father said, “ We will return to 
Tokio, to-day. We have had a pleasant and hon- 
orable holiday.” 

“ I wish first to find some of the intelligent crabs 
that make straight tracks by crawling sideways,” 
said Tara. He had seen in the tea-house at 
Enoshima some wonderful crabs, and hoped to find 
one for himself. 

“ And I wish to buy return gifts for Tei and 
Baby Onda in the shops ! ” said Ume. 

So while Tara hunted for crabs after breakfast, 
Ume and her mother hunted for gifts. 

The little boy found no large crabs; neither did 
he find any good place to fish for eels, but Ume 
found a lovely pearly necklace for Tei, and a pink 
- shell for Onda. 

In her eagerness to reach home and show the 


THE ISLAND OF SHELLS 8l 

gifts, she gave little thought to the beautiful sights 
to be seen from the train. 

She heard her grandmother say, “ There are 
some fine young bamboo saplings. They would 
look well beside the gate-pine-tree at New Year 
time. ,, 

She heard Tara ask, “ Why are they used in the 
gateway arch ? ” and her grandmother answered, 
“ Because they stand for constancy and honesty.” 

“ I will ask Benten Sama constantly for my wish 
to be fulfilled,” said Ume to herself. 

When they reached home, she ran at once to find 
Tei, but Tei had gone that very morning on a jour- 
ney to Nikko. 


CHAPTER XI 


A DAY IN SCHOOL 

What country is it that starts its children off to 
school very early in the morning? Japan, of 
course, the island kingdom, “ The Land of the Ris- 
ing Sun,” — and that is as it should be. 

It was early in the “ hour of the hare,” as time 
would have been reckoned in the days of old Japan ; 
but the American clock in the kitchen said half- 
past six, when Ume finished dressing for school. 

She wore a plum-colored plaited skirt, with a 
blue kimono tucked inside, and she said to her 
mother, “ May I now go to the honorable lesson- 
learn school, O Haha San? ” 

There was plenty of time between half-past six 
and seven o’clock for her to reach the school build- 
ing and be in line with the other children when they 
greeted the teacher. 

But all the other little girls were bending .up 
and down in their greeting to the teacher when 
Ume at last slipped into her place among them. 
She said her happy “ Ohayo ! ” just after the other 
lips were all closed upon the “ good-morning.” 


A DAY IN SCHOOL 


83 


She whispered to Tei as they slipped into their 
seats, “ We must eat our unworthy lunches to- 
gether. I have brought a bad piece of pickled 
radish for you. It was because I ran back to the 
dirty house for it that I was honorably late.” 

The Japanese people are all alike! When they 
mean one thing they say another. Ume really 
meant that their lunch was delicious ; that her 
pickled radish was the best to be had in Tokio; 
and her house the sweetest and cleanest in the 
world ; but it would have been very bad manners to 
say so; and to be late to school is not at all hon- 
orable in Japan. 

But Japan is a country where the people do every- 
thing in an original way. The carpenter pulls his 
saw toward Eim when he saws, and the planer pulls 
his plane toward him when he planes a board. 
Everybody sits down to work, and the horse goes 
into the stall tail first. 

The Japanese school children can never under- 
stand how the English children can make sense out 
of books that one reads from left to right and 
from the top to the bottom of the page. 

Ume’s teacher read the lesson aloud and the 
children read it after her. They read from the 
bottom to the top of the page, from right to 
left, and from the end of the book to the beginning. 

From seven until twelve o'clock the children were 


84 UME SAN IN JAPAN 

busy with their lessons and recitations, stopping to 
eat their lunches in the middle of the forenoon, and 
for a short recess at the end of every hour. 

Ume loved to go to school. Tara always said, 
“ It is because I am obliged to, that I go to school,” 
but Ume knew that her school-days were the hap- 
piest she would have for many years. After they 
were over, she would go to her husband’s house 
and take the lowest place in his family, as is the 
custom of Japanese maidens. 

Before that time she must learn to sew, cook and 
direct the servants in every household duty; she 
must also learn the tea-ceremony and the ceremony 
of flower arrangement. 

All these things she learns, as well as reading, 
writing and music. 

The tea-ceremony, which sounds so simple, is 
a very old and difficult one. Every position of the 
one who conducts it, as well as that of the bowl, 
spoon, tea-caddy and towel, is regulated by rule. 

Bowls are used instead of teapots, and tea powder 
instead of tea leaves. There is a sweeping of the 
room at the right time, and a walking out into the 
garden at another right time. Oh, it is not so 
simple as it sounds! 

The ceremony of arranging flowers is also very 
hard to learn. People who have learned it thor- 
oughly are said to have charming dispositions as a 


A DAY IN SCHOOL 


85 


reward of merit. They are gentle, self-controlled, 
peaceful-hearted and always at ease in the pres- 
ence of their superiors, besides having many other 
virtues. 

Ume enjoyed it all. Everything she did was 
prettily, and gracefully done. Whether she bent 
over a difficult, unruly spray of blossoms, or over 
her writing brush to make the difficult characters, 
her sweet oval face was never clouded. 

After the writing lesson was over on this opening 
day, she took her copy book, which was soggy with 
much India ink and water, and beckoned Tei to 
take hers also into the yard. There they spread 
the books in the sun to -dry. 

Tei’s family had been away for a month for the 
sake of Baby Onda’s health, and the two little 
girls had not seen each other until now. 

“ What did you see at Nikko? ” asked Ume. 

“We saw the most beautiful building in Japan; 
the tomb of the great Iyeyasu,” answered Tei. 

“ I also was at Nikko and played with Tei in the 
temple yard,” said a third child who overheard 
their talk. 

The three little girls walked back to the school- 
room together and Ume said, “ I have asked my 
mother to take me to Nikko some time.” 

“ There are beautiful temples there,” said Tei. 
“ The mad pony of the illustrious Iyeyasu is there 


86 


UME SAN IN JAPAN 


in a stable which has wonderful carvings over the 
doorway. It was there we saw the three monkeys 
your honorable mother spoke about one day.” 

Ume drew her breath in a long sigh. “ I have 
always wished to see those monkeys,” she said. 

“ After you have seen them,” said Tei, “ you 
will never again wish to see evil, hear evil, nor speak 
evil.” 

The little girls drew away from one another and 
fell into the three positions. They made a cunning 
picture as they stood, Ume with her fingers over 
her ears, Tei with her mouth covered, and the third 
little girl covering her eyes. 

The teacher stood in the doorway and smiled — 
“ The little dumb monkey, the little deaf monkey, 
and the monkey that will not see any evil ! ” he 
said. 

The three little monkeys bowed to the ground 
and ran laughing for their lunch boxes. 

“ What do you think Tara is doing in his school 
this minute? ” asked Tei, as they began eating rice- 
cakes. 

“ He is perhaps having military drill,” said Ume. 
“ Or he maybe is hearing about Iyeyasu ; that 
when he went into battle he wore a handkerchief 
over his head, but after the victory he put on his 
helmet.” 

Tei sighed. “ I wish there were not so many 


A DAY IN SCHOOL 


B; 


things to learn about our great heroes,” she said. 

Ume laughed. “ Let not the honorable teacher 
hear you say such a thing,” she said, “ else we shall 
have another history book given us, with the ex- 
ample of brave and loyal Japanese women to read 
in it.” 

No country in the world has so many books of 
history for the children to learn as Japan. It was 
not strange that Tei sometimes found it wearisome. 
There was all the history of Old Japan to be 
learned, as well as all about the New Japan, and 
even Ume was never sorry when the noon hour ar- 
rived and they were dismissed from school. 

They bowed low to the teacher, and the teachei 
bowed low to them, and they clattered toward homf 
with a great chattering of soft voices. 

But the voices were all hushed when Ume told 
her playmates that she had visited Benten . Sama’p 
temple at Enoshima in the time of great heat. 

“ Oh, Ume ! what favor did you ask of the dear 
goddess?” asked Tei. 

Ume shook her head, as she had done when 
Tara asked her the same question. 

“ I will wait and see if she grants it to me before 
I tell it to any one,” she said, and opened her pretty 
paper parasol. 


CHAPTER XII 


YUKI SAN IN THE STREET OF SHOPS 

Asakusa Temple and its beautiful grounds are in 
the eastern part of the city of Tokio. 

Jinrikisha runners could cover the distance be- 
tween the Utsuki house and Asakusa Temple in fif- 
teen or twenty minutes, but Baby Yuki was two 
hours on the way, because she toddled along so 
slowly and stopped so often to watch the children 
who were playing in the streets. 

The baby slipped quietly out of the house while 
her mother was having her honorable hair dressed. 
It takes a hair-dresser about two hours to dress a 
Japanese lady’s honorable hair, but fortunately it 
has to be done only once in five or six days be- 
cause the hair is never mussed at night. 

The women in Japan keep their heads peacefully 
quiet all night, letting their necks only rest upon 
the thin cushion of their wooden pillow. In this 
way the soft rolls and puffs of their shining black 
hair are not disturbed, and even the big pins do not 
have to be removed. 

Hair-dressers go from house to house as often 


YUKI SAN IN THE STREET OF SHOPS 89 

as they are needed, and when Baby Yuki saw one 
come into the room and begin taking down her 
mother’s hair, she began quietly taking her way 
along the stepping stones to the gate. Once outside 
the gate she trotted along toward the bridge over 
the moat. 

This moat ran around the old feudal castle where 
a daimyo used to live, and Yuki-ko often went as 
far as the bridge with Ume or Tara when they 
started off for school. Sometimes all three of the 
children went there to look at the green lotus leaves 
or the beautiful lotus blossoms which cover the 
water in July and August. 

But to-day Baby Yuki did not stop on the bridge. 
She crossed it and clattered down the street to a 
far corner where a street-peddler was selling toys. 

Japanese peddlers are always very pleasant peo- 
ple, and this one danced and sang funny songs 
which the baby was only too glad to hear. 

Up one street and down another the man took 
his way, stopping wherever he found a few little 
children to listen to him; and one or two children 
from every group followed along with Yuki San, 
making a pretty sight. 

A foreign lady with a camera stopped her jinrik- 
isha-man, saying, “ That is the very smallest child 
I ever saw standing on its own two feet and walk- 
ing with other children in the street. One of the 


UME SAN IN JAPAN 


90 

older girls should carry the baby on her back/' 

Baby Yuki stood on the outside of the group, 
making a pretty picture all by herself. She was so 
clean and sweet that the lady determined to fol- 
low her and take several pictures. She dismissed 
her jinrikisha and became a child with the others, 
following where the peddler led. 

At last they reached Asakusa street, which 
leads to Asakusa Temple. This street is lined with 
booths on each side, and in each booth there is a 
man selling toys, or candies, or paper parasols, or 
kites, or something to tempt the rin and sen out of 
a child’s pocket. 

Wherever there is a .temple in a Japanese city 
there is also a toy-shop, and where there is a toy- 
shop there is, of course, a toy which one must 
surely buy. The children love to buy the toys and 
play with them in the temple gardens. 

In the gardens of Asakusa Temple there are 
ponds filled with goldfish and silverfish and carp. 
These fish are tame and will eat from the children’s 
fingers because children have fed them for years 
and years. 

Just outside the gateway to the temple, old 
women sit beside little tables and sell saucers full 
of food for the fishes in the ponds and the doves 
that live in the temple eaves. And where one per- 
son sells anything many other people also sell some- 



The Street of Shops and Asakusa Temple. Page 91. 





YUKI SAN IN THE STREET OF SHOPS 91 

thing. They sell, the children buy, and the doves 
and fishes are fed. 

“ It is like the ‘ House that Jack Built/ ” said the 
American lady. “ This is the pond that held the 
fish, that ate the cakes, that lay in the dish and 
were sold in the booths with all kinds of toys, from 
dolls to kites, for girls and boys.” 

It does not take the little street of shops a long 
time to reach the temple steps, in Asakusa; but 
it does take the little people a long time to get 
through the street. 

Baby Yuki stopped to kotow to the first old 
woman she saw selling beans. In that moment the 
toy-peddler and all the children seemed to disap- 
pear. The baby looked around for them, and was 
frightened to find that she was all alone. 

But before she had time to realize that she was 
lost, the foreign lady had bought beans from the old 
woman and poured them into the baby’s hands, and 
the doves were flying down to pick up the beans as 
she scattered them in the street. 

From feeding the doves it was but a step to other 
joys. The lady bought a paper parasol at one of 
the booths, at another a doll and a Japanese 
lantern on the end of a slender bamboo stick. She 
tied the doll to the baby’s back, tilted the parasol 
over her shoulder, gave her the lantern to hold, 
and took her picture. 


92 


UME SAN IN JAPAN 


Then she took the child’s hand and they walked 
along together until they came to an old woman 
who sat on the ground holding a tray of paper 
flowers. 

The lady stopped to buy some of the flowers, and 
might have gone on buying gifts — for there was 
no end to the toys for sale in that short street — 
but the paper flowers had to be opened in a bowl 
of water. 

To find the bowl of water the big lady and the 
little girl had to pass under the temple gate and 
walk off among the trees and fish-ponds till they 
came to a tea-house. There they sat down to rest, 
and a maid brought tea and cakes for them to eat, 
and a bowl of water for the flowers. 

There are always picnics going on in the grounds 
of the temple, especially at chrysanthemum time; 
but there was never a prettier picnic sight than the 
one made by Yuki-ko San and her foreign friend 
as they knelt on the mats, sipping their tea, and 
watching the tiny paper flowers change into all 
sorts of shapes. 

Some of the flowers became beautiful potted 
plants, about an inch tall. Others changed into 
trees, or birds, and one even took the shape of Fu- 
jiyama, the lofty mountain. They seemed like fairy 
trees and birds, and not until the last one had 
opened did Yuki San lift her little face from the 


YUKI SAN IN THE STREET OF SHOPS 93 

bowl of water. Then she spoke for the first time. 
“ Yuki take little birds home to O Chichi San/’ she 
said. 

“ Mercy ! the child is lost and I don’t know how 
to find her people,” said the foreign lady. But the 
maid who served the cakes said, “ She must have 
a name-label around her neck.” 

Fortunately she had, and not only the street 
where she lived, but also the street and number 
of her father’s shop, was written on it. 

It was so far to either place that the lady said 
very sensibly, “We will take a carriage.” So she 
called a jinrikisha-man, and off they went to the 
father’s shop. 

At a little distance from the silk shop, where the 
father sat waiting for customers, the lady stopped 
her runner and put the little girl down upon the 
ground. “ Run to your O Chichi San,” she said, 
pointing to the shop, and then she watched the baby 
to see if she found the right father. 

In the meantime someone else was hurrying to 
find her father. It was Ume, who had been sent 
with one of the maids to tell the sad news that 
Baby Yuki had wandered away from home and 
was surely lost. 

Just as Ume reached the silk shop and poured out 
her story, who should toddle along with her hands 
full of toys, dropping one and then another as 


94 UME SAN IN JAPAN 

she kotowed her fat little body over them, but the 
baby herself. 

Of course there was much talk, and many ques- 
tions were asked of her; but the child could only 
say that “ Haha San with many hands ” had given 
her the toys and brought her to her father. 

“ It was Benten Sama,” said Ume. 

It is well known that Benten Sama has eight 
hands, and who but Benten Sama would give Baby 
Yuki so many lovely gifts and bring her safely 
through the city streets to her father’s shop? 

As they took the baby home to her frightened 
mother, Ume said softly to her father, “ Yuki-ko 
San did as much in finding you as Fishsave did 
when he found his father.” 

And her father answered, “ The tie between 
fathers, and children is honorably strong.” 

But Ume was already thinking that probably 
Benten Sama would answer her payer. 

As they passed the foreign lady, who was still 
sitting in her jinrikisha at the corner of the street, 
Ume looked longingly at the tan-colored shoes she 
was wearing. 

“ Red ones with black heels are prettier,” she 
said to herself. 


CHAPTER XIII 


THE EMPEROR’S BIRTHDAY 

“ Let the Emperor live forever ! ” sang Ume, on 
the third day of the eleventh month. 

This day is the Emperor’s birthday, and all loyal 
Japanese pray that their ruler may see the chrysan- 
themum cup go round, autumn after autumn, for a 
thousand years. 

Autumn is the loveliest month of all the year in 
Japan. Then the maples put on their glorious 
crimson and orange colors, and the chrysanthemums 
fling out their beautiful many-colored petals to the 
sun. 

The Japanese say that the maples are the crimson 
clouds that hang about the sunset of their flower 
life. 

From February until November different flowers 
reign, one after another, for a few short weeks. 
First comes the plum blossom, about which every- 
one writes a poem. Next the great double cherry 
blossoms make the island look like a lovely pink 
cobweb on the blue sea. After that, wistaria blos- 
soms, five or six feet long, hang from trellises and 


96 


UME SAN IN JAPAN 


flutter in the breeze; and so on, until at last the 
chrysanthemum, the royal flower, says “ Sayonara,” 
and the sun of the flower-year has set. 

“ The last flower is honorably the best,” said 
Ume, as she hovered over the masses of color in 
the garden-beds. 

She looked like a beautiful blossom herself in 
her blue silk kimono. Chrysanthemums in deep 
golden brown and palest pink were embroidered in 
the silk. Her undergarment of pink showed at the 
throat; and about her waist was a pink sash em- 
broidered with blue. 

That sash was Ume’s delight. It was tied in an 
immense bow behind, and Tara had never been 
able to find the ends that he might pull them out 
and so tease his sister a little. 

On her feet Ume wore black lacquer clogs and 
white stockings, with the great toe in a room by 
itself. 

Her hair was carefully drawn up to the top of 
her head, where it was tied with a broad piece of 
blue crepe, and then formed into several puffs at 
the back. A brilliant pink chrysanthemum pin was 
stuck through the puffs in one direction and a but- 
terfly pin in the other. 

Ume’s pins and sashes were her dearest treas- 
ures ! 

The finishing touch was given to her face and 


THE EMPEROR’S BIRTHDAY 


97 


lips. Rice powder made her skin look very white, 
and a touch of paint made her cheeks and mouth 
very red, although they were quite red enough be- 
fore. 

Her mother was wholly pleased with Ume’s ap- 
pearance, but Ume shook her head over the clogs; 
she wished for something different. 

“ It is time to make the honorable start to the 
gardens, Ume-ko ! ” called her mother at last, and 
the little girl left the flowers and took her seat in 
the waiting jinrikisha. 

Ume was going with her mother, first to make 
an offering at the temple, then to look at the flowers 
in the gardens at Dango-Zaka. 

Tara was going with his father to see the Em- 
peror review the troops. 

Yuki San was not forgotten. She was going 
with her grandmother to play in the gardens at 
Asakusa once more. 

All wore their festival clothes, as was proper on 
the Emperor’s birthday. 

Tara and his father wore kimonos, but they were 
much darker in color than Ume’s ; their sashes were 
narrower, and there were no bows in the back. 

Yuki-ko was the really gorgeous one. Her ki- 
mono was of bright red silk, her sash pale yellow. 
A gold embroidered pocket hung from the sash and 
in the pocket she carried a charm to keep her safe 


98 UME SAN IN JAPAN 

from harm in case something happened to her name- 
label. 

The “ honorable start ” was made at last and the 
three jinrikisha coolies dashed through the gate, 
one behind the other, Tara and his father in the 
lead. 

A fuzzy caterpillar was humping his way along 
the road outside the gate. The three runners 
turned aside and left a large part of the road to 
the caterpillar, although so much room was more 
than the fuzzy creature needed. The men thought 
that perhaps the soul of an ancestor might be in 
the little insect, and they feared to crush it. 

The city was in its gayest holiday attire. Red 
and white Japanese flags adorned every house. Men 
dressed in uniform were hurrying through the 
streets, soldiers were marching toward the parade 
grounds, and there were crowds of happy people 
everywhere. 

After riding over the wooden bridge Tara and 
his father took their way to the Emperor’s review, 
while the other two jinrikishas turned toward Asa- 
kusa Temple. 

Ume sat up very straight, making herself as tall 
as possible, and said, as she watched her father 
being whirled down the street, “ My son, it is now 
my unworthy privilege — ” then stopped, because 
her mother looked at her in reproof. 


THE EMPEROR’S BIRTHDAY 


99 


“ It is my unworthy privilege to remind you that 
respectful children do not thus mimic their parents 
in voice and word,” said her mother gravely. 

“ I will ask to be forgiven when we are in the 
temple,” said Ume penitently. 

She was still serious when she dropped a rin into 
the grated box that waits always for offerings in 
the temples. 

“ May I write a prayer to the goddess Kwan- 
non ? ” she asked, as the coin clinked against others 
in the box. 

“ Is there something you very much desire, Ume- 
ko ? ” asked her mother with a smile. 

Ume nodded. “ There is something I have asked 
from every one of the gods and goddesses you have 
ever told me about,” she said. “ I have been ask- 
ing for it constantly ever since my last plum-blos- 
sorrf birthday.” 

“ Kwannon is the goddess of mercy ; perhaps 
she will be merciful to you and grant your wish, 
whatever it may be,” said her mother. 

So Ume wrote her wish on a slip of paper and 
hung it where hundreds of other prayers were 
hanging on a lattice in front of a shrine. 

Afterwards she went with her mother to the cor- 
ner where the god Binzuru was waiting to cure any 
sort of disease. 

Ume’s mother had an ache in her back. She 


IOO 


UME SAN IN JAPAN 


rubbed her hand gently over the back of the god 
and then tried to rub her own back ; but it was not 
easy to reach between her shoulders and rub the 
pain away. After she finished reaching, her back 
ached more than before. 

“ We will go to the gardens at Dango-Zaka; 
there we shall forget our aches in looking at the 
lovely flowers,” she told Ume. 

Baby Yuki was already feeding the goldfish and 
did not care whether her mother stayed at Asakusa 
Temple or not. 

So the two rode away through the city streets 
toward the district of Dango-Zaka. Sometimes 
they mounted a hill from which they could look 
over the city and see the flags fluttering in the 
breeze ; sometimes they crossed a canal crowded with 
heavily-laden scows ; sometimes they passed through 
business streets where people sat in their houses or 
shops with the front walls all open to the sidewalk. 
The people sat and worked, or ate their lunch, or 
sold their wares, as if they were all a part of one 
great family with the people in the streets and 
had no secrets from them. 

Wells and water-tanks stood at convenient 
distances along the streets, and from their jinriki- 
shas Ume and her mother saw crowds of women 
washing rice and chatting with one another as they 
worked. 


THE EMPEROR’S BIRTHDAY IOI 

At the chrysanthemum gardens there were many 
little gates, at each one of which Ume paid four 
sen before they could enter and look at the flowers 
in living pictures. 

The gardeners in Japan make all sorts of won- 
derful stories and pictures with the chrysanthe- 
mums. 

Here you will see a ship filled with gods and 
goddesses. There you will be astonished at the 
sight of a sail set to carry a junk over a chrysan- 
themum sea. Somewhere else you will come upon 
an open umbrella, a flag, a demon or a dragon; 
there is no end to the quaint fancies ! 

It is hard to understand how these pictures can be 
made until one learns that the gardeners have been 
at the business for several generations. They say 
that, to have a thing well done, your children and 
grandchildren must do it after you. 

To make the chrysanthemum pictures, they tie 
the branches of the plants, and even the tiny flowers, 
to slender bamboo sticks; there is also a delicate 
frame of copper wire through which the flowers are 
sometimes drawn, and sometimes the gardeners use 
light bamboo figures of boats and dragons and 
gods. 

The faces of the people in the flower pictures 
are paper or plaster masks. It would really be too 
much to ask the gardeners to make chrysanthemum 


102 


UME SAN IN JAPAN 


expressions. Nowhere outside of Japan will you 
find such curious pictures! 

It was very late when Ume and her mother 
reached home again. Now the houses on both 
sides of the streets were hung with festoons of 
flags and lanterns on each of which was the round 
red sun of Japan. 

The wide-opened shutters showed brightly 
lighted rooms in which the families were entertain- 
ing friends or having tea and cakes; they sat on 
the floors, which were covered with scarlet blankets 
in honor of the Emperor. 

In the shops were tempting displays of fruits, 
fish and toys, and in the distance Ume could see 
the fireworks which were being set off in the palace 
grounds. 

Tara and his father were already at home, but 
the boy was far too excited over the grand review 
of the Emperor’s troops to listen to anything his 
sister had to tell. 

“ He is an honorably wonderful man, our most 
illustrious Emperor,” said Tara. “ My admirable 
father told me that he never stood upon his own 
feet until he was sixteen years old.” 

“ I think that is not so honorably wonderful,” 
said Ume stoutly. But when she took both of her 
own feet up at the same time, to try how it could 
be done, she found herself suddenly upon the floor. 


THE EMPEROR’S BIRTHDAY 


103 


“ Did he walk upon his august head ? ” she de- 
manded. 

“ Ume,” said her mother, “ speak not so disre- 
spectfully of the Son of Heaven ! ” 

But Tara explained : “ He was carried about 

all the time, and shown only to very noble people 
once in a while. But when he became a man, he 
said it should all be different. And he put down 
all the old nobility that had kept him so honorably 
helpless, and then he made everything as it is to- 
day in Japan. 

“ Under the old rule, no one was allowed to 
leave the country and we knew no other people 
except the Chinese. Now we know the whole 
world and can teach the other nations many 
thing’s.” 

Just then old Maru entered the room with tea 
and cakes. The cakes looked exactly like maple 
leaves. There w'ere also candies made to look like 
autumn grasses and chrysanthemums. 

Ume clapped her hands and danced about the 
room. 

“ May the Emperor live forever ! ” she sang ; and 
Tara wheeled and marched like a soldier, shouting, 
“ May Japan never be conquered ! ” 


CHAPTER XIV 


DARUMA SAM A 

Among the stories which O Ba San told to Ume 
and her brother was one about Daruma Sama. 

Daruma Sama was a Japanese saint who lived 
many, many years ago. It was his great desire 
to cross the sea on a leaf, but in order to do so it 
was first necessary for him to pray long and sin- 
cerely to the gods. 

He knelt in prayer for many years, and at last his 
feet and legs fell from his body because they had 
been idle so long a time. 

In all the toy-shops there are images of this 
saint with his large head and big round body which 
has no trouble in sitting still. 

The Japanese children make their snow men in 
the image of Daruma Sama. They give him a 
charcoal ball for each eye and a streak of charcoal 
for his nose and mouth, and then they have a fine 
snow man. 

It w'as almost the end of the year before Tara 
had an opportunity to make a Daruma. In Tokio 
snow rarely covers the ground for more than 


DARUMA SAM A 105 

twenty-four hours at a time, and sometimes there 
is a winter with almost no snow at all. 

But one evening, only two days before the New 
Year Festival, the air was so chilly that the veranda 
shutters were all tightly closed and the shoji drawn 
together, while the family sat around the fireplace. 

Lift up the square of matting in the middle of a 
Japanese living-room and you will find, sunk in 
the floor, a stone-lined bowl a few inches deep. 
This is the fireplace. When the day is cold the 
maid puts a shovelful of live coals into this bowl, 
places a wooden frame about a foot high over it, 
and covers all with a quilt. Then the cold ones 
may sit around the fire on the floor, draw the quilt 
over their knees and into their laps, and soon 
become perfectly warm. 

Tara and Ume had heard many a delightful story 
as they sat snuggled under the warm quilt on winter 
evenings. 

On this evening their father said suddenly, “ The 
white snow-flakes will fall to-night and cover the 
earth as the white plum blossoms cover the trees.” 

Tara sprang from under the quilt and ran to open 
the shutters so that he might see for himself how 
the weather looked outside. 

He was so eager that his fingers slipped and 
pushed a hole through the paper covering of the 
shoji. His mother looked sadly at the torn place. 


106 UME SAN IN JAPAN 

“ It was only this morning,” she said, “ that I put 
new papers on the shoji to be in readiness for the 
New Year. Baby Yuki’s fingers had made many 
holes in the paper walls.” 

In a moment Tara ran back into the warm room. 
“ It is faithfully true,”' he cried. “ Even now white 
flakes are falling.” 

In the morning it was as if they had moved to a 
different world. The snow made the garden, with 
its trees and pond and bridge, look like fairyland. 

“ I will go to the garden-house for my stilts,” 
said Tara, “ then I can walk about in the snow on 
my heron-legs as the white herons walk in the 
mud of the rice-fields.” 

Stilts are made of bamboo sticks, and are called 
“ heron-legs,” after the long-legged snowy herons 
that strut about in the wet fields. Wooden clogs 
will lift their wearers out of the mud of the streets 
in bad weather ; but the boys are always glad of an 
excuse to get out their stilts. They walk on them so 
much that they become expert in their use and can 
run and even play games on them. 

Ume looked rather sadly at the new white world 
outside. 

“ The snow has come too soon,” she said. 

“ Why?” asked Tara. 

“ Because I have no time for play,” answered 
Ume. “ There are gifts to finish, and I must also 


DARUMA SAM A 107 

help the honorable mother to make all clean and 
sweet for the New Year.” 

“ Let the gifts honorably wait until the hour of 
the horse,” said Tara, “ so that you may play with 
us this morning in the garden.” 

But Ume went dutifully to her sewing. She was 
making a bundle handkerchief for Tei out of a piece 
of bright colored crepe with her family crest em- 
broidered on it. 

After that was finished she made a lucky-bag to 
hang on the New Year’s arch at the house door. 

The lucky-bag was made of a square of Japanese 
paper. Into it Ume put several things which are 
known to bring good luck — a few chestnuts, a bit 
of dried fish, and a dried plum. She tied them up 
in the paper with a red and white paper string, and 
put the bag away until the arch should be ready. 

New Year’s Day is the most important time in 
the whole year in Japan. It is the day when all 
the people, from the highest to the lowest, have a 
holiday. For days, and even weeks, preparations 
are made to celebrate the festival with proper cere- 
mony. Never are the streets of the cities and 
towns so filled with gayly dressed crowds of people 
hurrying here and there, buying and selling, as 
during the last days of the dying year. 

Every house is thoroughly cleaned from roof to 
veranda, the shoji are covered with fresh papers, 


108 UME SAN IN JAPAN 

new kimonos and sashes are made, new hairpins 
purchased, new mats are laid on the floors and the 
old ones are burned. 

On the last day of the old year every room is 
dusted with the feathery leaves of a green branch of 
bamboo. Then the gateway is decorated with a 
beautiful arch, one of the Japanese symbols of 
health, happiness and prosperity. 

On each side of the gateway two holes are dug 
in which are planted small pine trees. On the left 
is the tree which represents the father, on the right 
is the mother-pine. Beside these are set the grace- 
ful stems of the bamboo, the green leaves towering 
above the low roof and rustling in the wind. From 
one bamboo stalk to the other is hung a thick rope 
of rice-straw, beautifully plaited and knotted, to give 
a blessing to the household and keep out all evil 
spirits. 

From this rope hang yellow oranges, and scarlet 
lobsters which with their crooked bodies signify 
long life and an old age bent with years. There 
are also fern leaves, a branch of camellia, a piece of 
seaweed, a lucky-bag, flags, and strips of white 
paper which are supposed to be images of men 
offering themselves to the gods. 

Everything about the pine-tree arch has a mean- 
ing, and signifies wishes for health, strength, happi- 
ness, obedience, honor and a long life. 


DARUMA SAMA 


109 


Of course there must be a decoration inside the 
house as well. Tara and Ume went to the shops 
with their father to choose one for the alcove room, 
after the Daruma. Sama was made and Ume’s 
sewing finished. 

The children chose a harvest ship, a junk about 
two feet long, made of straw with twigs of pine 
and bamboo in the bow and stern. It was loaded 
with many bales of make-believe merchandise in 
which were little gifts, and was sprinkled with 
gold-dust to make it look bright. There was a red 
sun on one side of the boat and the sails were of 
scarlet paper. 

On the way home they passed a shop where 
foreign shoes were offered for sale, and where 
some one at that moment was buying a pair of red 
shoes for a little girl about as old as Ume. 

Ume held her father still to watch the child try 
them on her little feet, and they certainly made the 
feet look very pretty. 

Ume’s father smiled at the look in his daughter’s 
eyes, but he soon drew her away to a toy-shop out 
of sight of the little red shoes. There they bought 
a ball for Baby Yuki and gifts for the mother and 
grandmother, going home only when they could 
carry nothing more. 

If ever there is a time and place when enticing 
red shoes can be forgotten, it is New Year’s time 


IIO UME SAN IN JAPAN 

among the shops in Japan. No one ever thinks of 
staying indoors then, else he would miss the gayest, 
liveliest, brightest time of the whole year. 

The shop-keepers have to fill their shelves with 
great quantities of new things to match the New 
Year; there are new games, new kimonos, new 
clogs, new toys for sale everywhere, and even the 
story-tellers brighten up their old stories to make 
them seem like new. 

That last day before the New Year was a very 
busy one in the Utsuki household. There were gifts 
to be put into dainty packages, the pine-tree arch to 
be decorated, the last stitches to be taken in the 
new kimonos, and the last bills to be paid — even 
the smallest one that might possibly have been 
overlooked. 

There is a beautiful custom in Japan of beginning 
the year without a debt. Every bill is paid and no 
one owes a single sen when the old year dies and 
the new year dawns. 

When at last Ume said her honorable good-night 
to her father and mother and went to her wooden 
pillow she was very tired. 

As she crept under the warm coverlet she whis- 
pered drowsily, “ May Benten Sama, or Kwannon, 
or one of the illustrious goddesses give me what I 
have prayed for so long.” Then she fell fast asleep. 


CHAPTER XV 


NEW YEAR’S DAY 

“ So many honorable sounds ! ” murmured Ume 
drowsily, and she listened for a moment without 
opening her eyes. 

It was New Year’s morning, so early that the sun 
was only just rising. 

Ume could hear the clapping of many hands 
outside the house. “ I, myself, meant to welcome 
the illustrious sun with the hand-joy,” she said to 
herself, and sprang from her bed with wide-open 
eyes. 

It took but a moment to slip into a thick kimono 
and push open the shoji. Someone had already 
opened the wooden shutters and Ume reached the 
corner of the street in time to see the round red sun 
send his first beams over the snow-covered roofs. 

She clapped her hands joyously and bowed a wel- 
coming “ Ohayo ” to the great ball of light. “ Now 
I shall surely begin the year with good luck ! ” she 
said to herself as she slipped back into the house. 

She closed the shoji and cuddled again between 
the soft quilts for warmth. Then it occurred to 


II 2 


UME SAN IN JAPAN 


her to wonder why she had not seen her mother, who 
always rose very early, among the group that was 
greeting the New Year sun. 

The air was filled with the sound of joy bells 
which were ringing from all the temples. One 
hundred and eight strokes must they ring, twelve 
times nine, to keep all evil spirits away from the 
city in this new year. 

But there were other sounds which came from 
within the house. Was it, — yes, it surely was the 
sound of a little new baby’s cry. 

Again Ume was out of bed and pattering across 
the room to open her shoji. Her father was stand- 
ing before the alcove in the honorable guest room, 
and he read the question in her face before Ume 
could ask it. 

“ Yes,” he said, “ a new son has come to our 
unworthy house on this morning of the New Year.” 

Ume bowed her forehead to the floor, “ Omedeto, 
O Chichi San,” she said. “ I am most respectfully 
happy. May I go to see him and bid him honorable 
welcome ? ” 

“ After the breakfast is faithfully eaten, it may 
perhaps be permitted,” answered her father. Then 
he asked, “ Was there not some gift you have asked 
from the gods in the year that has passed? ” 

“ I have asked many times for a gift, but neither 
the gods nor the goddesses have yet given it to me.” 


NEW YEAR’S DAY 


IJ 3 

“ Have you ever asked the generous mother for 
it? ” 

“ No, O Chichi San.” 

“ Why have you not asked your insignificant 
father?” 

“ O Chichi San, I feared you would not permit 
me to have what I most wished.” 

Her father looked at her gravely and took a 
package from his kimono sleeve. He gave it to 
Ume, saying as he did so, “ Your thoughtful mother 
asked me to buy this in the foreign shop and give 
it to you this morning.” 

The package was tied with red and white paper 
string. Ume took it in both hands, raised it to her 
forehead, bowed her thanks, and opened it. Inside 
the package was a pair of red shoes with black heels ! 

“ O Chichi San, how worthily beautiful ! ” and 
Ume danced about the room, clasping the pretty 
things to her heart. “ This is what I have asked of 
Benten Sama and Kwannon and of the other 
goddesses,” she said with shining eyes. 

Then she stood still and said wonderingly, “But 
I did not ask for a baby brother, although he was 
more to be desired.” 

“ Your mother gives both the shoes and tfie baby 
brother to you,” said her father. 

“ May I not go to her and give her many thanks 
truly ? ” asked Ume. 


UME SAN IN JAPAN 


1 14 

“ Your mother is ill/’ said her father. “ It may 
be that she will never speak to us again.” 

“ Oh, no ! ” cried Ume in great distress. She 
looked at the little red shoes and suddenly dropped 
them to the floor. 

“ Benten Sama may have them, if she will only 
make my honorable mother well,” she said. 

The pretty things which she had dreamed of, and 
longed for, and begged of all the gods, suddenly 
became of no value to her except as an offering to 
save her mother’s life. 

She knelt at her father’s feet and bowed her head 
to the floor. “ Have I your noble permission to go 
to Asakusa Temple and pray to the good Kwannon 
that my mother may become well ? ” she asked. 

“ Yes,” her father answered, “ and it may be that 
a gift of that which you most treasure will be 
pleasing to the Goddess of Mercy.” 

Ume looked down at the little red shoes, gathered 
them up and tucked them into her kimono sleeve; 
then ran to ask old Maru to go with her to the 
temple. 

The little girl had never before been to the temple 
on so sad an errand. 

“ See,” said old Maru as the jinrikisha-man took 
up his shafts, “ the gate-pine-tree is giving you an 
honorable message.” 

Ume looked back as the old nurse continued, 


NEW YEAR’S DAY 


115 

“ When autumn winds blow the leaves from the 
other trees and leave them sad and cheerless, the 
pine holds its needles more green and vigorous than 
ever. We should be like the pine, brave to conquer 
our troubles when they come.” 

Ume tried to smile. “ I will be obediently brave,” 
she said. 

Old Maru nodded approvingly. “ As the pine 
stands for strength and the bamboo for uprightness, 
so the fern means hope and the seaweed good 
fortune.” 

Ume began to be a little cheerful. “ I dreamed 
of Fujiyama, the sacred, in the night,” she said, 
“ that means great happiness.” 

“Yes,” said old Maru comfortably, “everything 
points to good fortune this moring. Let us hope 
that the merciful goddess will be gracious to grant 
our prayer.” 

The sound of the temple bells still filled the air. 
Everywhere the streets and houses were decorated 
with paper lanterns and flags and banners, each 
one white with a round red sun. The lanterns 
were strung in rows across the streets and on the 
houses from the low eaves to the veranda posts. 
At the temple they hung at every possible point 
from roof to steps. 

Ume and Maru went reverently through all the 
ceremony of washing the hands and mouth, ringing 


II 6 UME SAN IN JAPAN 

the bell, dropping the offering of coins in the box 
and buying the rice-cakes. They left their clogs at 
the entrance among several other pairs, for many sad 
hearts had come to the temple with petitions on this 
early morning of the New Year. 

When Ume left the temple the pretty red shoes 
were lying at the feet of the Goddess Kwannon, 
and the child’s face looked full of hope. 

As they sat in the jinrikisha old Maru said, “ One 
can never do too much for the honorable mother.” 
Then she added proudly, “ No other nation in the 
world can show such examples of filial love as 
Japan.” 

“ What do you mean ? ” asked Ume, who could 
listen to a story now that her heart was lightened 
of its fear. 

“ I mean the example of the four and twenty 
paragons,” replied the nurse. “ The gods never 
gave me a son. If they had I should have prayed 
that he might be like the paragon who, when he 
himself was very old, became a baby so that his 
parents might not realize how old they had 
grown.” 

“ But I thought we Japanese liked to become very 
old,” said Ume, puzzled. “ I always say ‘ Ohayo, 
old woman/ to the batter-cake woman at the 
corner, and she is gratefully pleased.” 

“ That is true. But the paragon showed his filial 


NEW YEAR’S DAY 1 17 

affection by acting as a baby,” persisted old Maru. 
“ It was a noble thing to do.” 

“ How many paragons were there ? ” asked Ume. 

“ Four and twenty,” replied the old woman. 

“ Was one of them a little girl, and did she give 
up her red shoes ? ” asked Ume. 

Old Maru looked doubtful. “ It was a long time 
ago,” she said. “ I think no red shoes had been 
made in the world at that time.” 

But Ume was. ^gain thinking of her mother. 
“ Tell the jinrikisha-man to go faster,” she urged. 

The man was trotting along, looking at every 
pine-tree arch. The treeless streets, as far as one 
could see, were a bower of pine and bamboo. Little 
children ran into the road, dressed in new kimonos 
and sashes. Boys were making images of Daruma 
Sama in the snow, messengers were bearing gifts 
from one house to another, and men dressed in 
uniform were already going to pay their respects 
to their beloved Emperor. 

Some of the streets were almost impassable 
because of the number of beautifully dressed girls 
who were playing battledore and shuttlecock. The 
air was full of the bright fluttering toys as they 
were struck from one player to the other, and the 
silver world was a very merry place as Ume rode 
swiftly toward her home. 

“ If only the honorable mother is augustly well, 


Il8 UME SAN IN JAPAN 

and the new baby strong,” she said wistfully, “ our 
humble household might be the gayest of them all.” 

As they drew near to their own gateway, Ume 
clapped her hands. Tara and his father were in 
the garden and an enormous kite was just rising 
into the air. It was decorated with a great red 
sun and a bright red carp, and had a long tail of red 
and blue papers flying behind it. Higher and 
higher it rose, the tail turning and twisting in the 
wind. 

“ I know my honorable mother is better ! ” cried 
Ume, beside herself with joy. 

“ The chestnuts did not go into the lucky-bag for 
nothing,” said old Maru contentedly. “ I knew they 
would bring an answer to our prayer.” 

But Ume did not hear her. She left the old 
woman picking her way carefully along the snowy 
stepping-stones while she flew to her father. 

“ Is my admirable mother better ? ” she asked 
breathlessly. 

“ Yes,” answered her father. “ O Doctor San 
says she will soon be well.” 

“ It is because the gracious Kwannon was 
pleased with the red shoes,” said Ume softly. 


PRONOUNCING VOCABULARY 
AND DICTIONARY 


A sa'ku sa, a temple in Tokio. 

Ba, grandmother. 

Bgn'tSn Sa'ma, a goddess of love and good fortune. 

chi chi (che'che), father. 

chSp'sticks, small sticks used in eating. 

cl6gs, a wooden shoe worn to lift the feet out of the mud. 

C6n fu'cius (shius), a celebrated Chinese philosopher. 

Daru'ma Sa'ma, a Japanese god. 

En 6 shi'ma (she), a small island on the east coast of 
Japan. Shima means island. 

Fu ji ya ma (fu'je ya/ma), an extinct volcano, the highest 
mountain of Japan. Yama means mountain, 
gei sha (ga/sha), a dancing girl, 
ge ta (ga/ta), wooden clogs, 
go, five. 

go'down, a fireproof building used as a storehouse, 
lia'ha, mother, 
i chi (e'che), one. 

jin rik'I sha, a two-wheeled carriage drawn by a man. 
jftnk, a flat-bottomed, sea-going sailing vessel. 

Ka ma'kii ra, a small town on the east coast of Japan. 

Ka mei do (ka ma/do), a temple in Tokio. 
ki mo no (ke mo'no), a garment resembling a dressing- 
gown, worn by men, women, and children in Japan. 
Kin ta'rS, a Japanese hero. 


ki ri gi ri su (ke re ge're su), a singing insect, 
ko, little. 

ko'to, a musical instrument somewhat like a harp, 
ko'tow, bow the forehead tg. the ground. 

Kwan'ndn, the goddess of mercy. 

Ma'ru, round, a name sometimes given to girls, 
ni (ne), two. 

Na rii ho'do, an exclamation. 

6, honorable, the Japanese honorific. 

6 Ba San, honorable Grandmother Mrs. 

O hay o (5 hi'o), “ honorable early,” good-morning, 
o m6 d£ to (6 ma da'to), “ honorable congratulation.” 

6 ya'ma, a mountain near Yokohama. 

rin, a coin, one tenth of a sen, one twentieth of a cent. 

s&n, three. 

San, Mr., Mrs., or Miss ; a title of respect, 
sa k£ (sa'ka), a liquor made from rice. 

Sa'ma, Mr., Mrs., or Miss ; a title of respect, 
s&m'i sen, a musical instrument resembling a banjo. 
s6n, a coin worth one tenth of a yen, one half of a cent, 
shi (she), four, 
su'zu, an insect. 

Su ga wa'ra-no-Mich i za'n£ (na), a Japanese goddess, 
ta bi (ta'be), stockings, with a place for the big toe. 
Ta'ma, jewel ; often used as a girl’s name. 

Ta'ra, a boy’s name. 

Tei (ta),. a girl’s name. 

To ki o (to'ke o), the capital of Japan. 

U m6 (u ma'), plum blossom ; often used as a girl’s name. 
Ut su ki ( ut su'ke), a family name, 
ygn, a coin worth about fifty cents. 











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